Hiding in the Green
by scribblescribblescribble
Summary: Raina Queen, the last keeper of a massive seed storage facility, leaves her Vault for the first time, and with her Mr. Handy, Jonny-say-Quoi, begins replanting the Commonwealth with vegetation not seen for two hundred years. This does not go unnoticed, and soon various factions are seeking whoever is responsible. After all, such a treasure is too much for one person to possess...
1. Narrative Causality

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Once upon a time, in the year 2077, there was a couple who had a baby son named Shaun who they loved very much, but something terrible happened. Their world ended, and they were forced to take shelter in a vault deep underground, where they were put into an enchanted sleep in chambers of ice…

Sorry, wrong story.

They were put into a cryogenic state of suspended animation by people who were, sad to say, not very nice. They might have slept there until the cryogenic suspension failed, except that they were woken up by people who were even _less_ nice than the people who had put them to sleep. Those people stole the baby and killed the parent who was holding him while the other parent watched.

Then the head killer of those people turned to look at the surviving parent, and, contrary to orders, obeyed his instincts and killed that one too.

Yes, you read that right. _**Both**_ parents died.

This sent a terrible shockwave through the space-time continuum, because in all the other versions of this story, one of the parents survived and set out on a mission to get their baby back. Along the way, they did some amazing things, made new friends, and changed their world forever. Whether they changed it for the better or made it worse is a matter of opinion. The point is, they changed the world.

And they did find their son, although it didn't turn out the way they imagined. They also realized that although they mourned the spouse they lost, the companion who fought by their side and shared their sorrow and joy had slowly become more than just a friend, and there was still a chance at happiness.

Okay, sometimes they discovered it took _more_ than one companion to properly console them, but that's their business.

The point is, the death of the second parent left a vacuum in the world, in the lives they would have affected. And as we all know, nature abhors a vacuum. At that point, narrative causality stepped in, and found someone who was, well, close enough.

This is that story. The story of that someone.

* * *

Raina was carefully hand pollinating the cacao bushes with a slender paintbrush made out of her own hair when she heard her sister Victoria yelp, a crash of falling scaffolding, and then a wet thud like a melon dropped on concrete. "Vicky?" she called, and when there was no answer, she dropped the brush and dashed to the other end of the EnviroVault (Tropical Clime). "Vicky!"

Their last remaining Mr. Handy, Jonny-say-Quoi was already there, pulling away parts of the collapsed walkway. "Miss Victoria? Are you all right? Miss Victoria—. Miss Raina—oh, Miss Raina, I am so sorry."

Raina looked, and a burning bitterness rose in her throat, choking her, because her sister's head had hit the corner of a planter, shattering her skull. "No. No, Vicky. You can't. You can't _do_ this. You can't leave me alone. You can't." How could her sister go from being a thinking, living person one moment to a rapidly cooling sack of meat the next? It was not possible. It was not comprehensible. But it was true.

All the while, all around them, the agribots continued their work, tending to the plants, their dull and dim AI packages rendering them incapable of understanding or caring.

"Vicky…" Raina had seen death before. She killed chickens and rabbits on a regular basis, then cleaned and cooked them. However, she had never seen a person die before. It was like watching her own death, for so many reasons. Reaching out, she brushed the hair away from Vicky's face, recoiling as her fingers touched the mushy spot where her sister's head was caved in. Abruptly, she turned and vomited on the walkway. "Don't leave me. Don't," she choked out through her tears.

At the end of the day cycle, she and Jonny-say-Quoi buried Vicky in EnviroVault (Temperate Clime), in the bed they used for purely ornamental plants, among their foremother and sisters—Caroline, Regina, Isabella, Noor, Melisande, Catherine, Maria Theresa and the very first of them all, Theodosia.

"What was she like?" Raina asked Jonny-say-Quoi. (His name was a play on the French phrase 'Je ne se quoi', something which cannot be adequately or fully defined.) "Theodosia, not Vicky. I mean, I know we're all _her,_ genetically speaking, but she was the only one who lived before the bomb, and being clones of her doesn't make us carbon copies. Vicky and I weren't the same in everything—nor were we that much like Joanna." She and her sisters all had names which were either the names of queens or names which meant 'Queen'. Joanna had been the sister before Vicky, and before her had been Maria Theresa. She could remember Jo, although she had been a child back then, but Maria Theresa was no more than a name to her.

"Hmm." The robot paused not so much for thought as for emphasis. "Sorrowful. She channeled her sadness into her work."

"Our work. All of ours," Raina looked around. "Except—I'm the last." The words rang bleakly in her head, though the vegetation absorbed the sound.

Doctor Theodosia Queen, the one and only survivor of their vault, was the keeper of the Concord Seed Repository, a massive collection of seeds from around the world, a bank far more valuable than any full of gold or jewels after the bombs fell.

For more than two hundred years, she and her cloned daughters had cared for the plants in the sprawling underground greenhouses, germinating seeds from the storage units, raising the plants, collecting their seeds, and then returning the new crop to storage, ensuring that the collection remained viable. After all, someday the radiation would die down enough for the world to be replanted. Then there would again be roses and chocolate, cherries and kohlrabi, maple trees and bananas, all that was beautiful, useful and nutritious. Of course there would also be nicotine, cocaine, and opium when that time came, but even Eden had its serpent.

In the meantime, besides preserving the flora of the world before the bombs, there was work to be done. People needed to eat, and in the experimental EnviroVault, the Queen women had developed razorgrain and mutfruit, super ginko trees and Sleeping Beauty roses, plants which would flourish in irradiated soil and provide for the hungry survivors. Raina's eyes went to the plaque on the plinth, the one with the names of the sisters who were not buried there. _Margaret._ _Elizabeth. Juliana. Constancia. Matilda. Ulrike. Joanna_.

They were the ones who had left the Vault—and never returned. None of those who left had ever returned. From the day the bombs dropped in 2077 to that day, they had no word from the outside world, so periodically, one of the sisters went forth to find someone— _anyone_ —else out there. They'd gone armed, with Pip-Boys on their wrists and seeds to trade and to spread out into the world, trying to find other survivors, and one by one, a year and a day after they left, their names had been engraved on the plaque.

"I'm the last," Raina repeated. "There's no growing medium left to start another clone, and we're perilously low on fusion cores. At our current rate of consumption, they'll run out in about three years, five if I scale back the plantings and shut down half the EnviroVaults. So much here is worn out or used up. Without power, there will be no more grow-lights, no environmental controls, no cold storage. I'm going to have to go out into the world. I have no choice, because everything here will die within a few years. Although my sisters failed, although they never returned, I have no choice but to follow them, because if the Seed Repository dies, then we will all have failed, and we might all of us have died in the blast, and spared ourselves two hundred years of work. Besides, what else is there to do but wait until the lights go out?"

"Miss Raina—," Jonny-say-Quoi paused. "I am forced to concur with you. What is more, as you are the only remaining Queen, my duties are not divided. I can offer you more aid than I offered your predecessors, for then I had a responsibility to protect and raise the younger family members. I can go ahead and scout, and I can accompany you in your travels. However, I must point out that other than a few syringers, there are no armaments or ammunition left."

"If syringers are all I have, then I'll wake up the deadliest plants in storage and start brewing poisons. Aconite, curare, strychnine vine, ricin, poison arrow plant, rosary peas—I'll grow puncture vines and coat the seeds with poison to make caltrops." Raina smiled wryly. "Whatever or whoever I shoot will _wish_ I shot them with bullets instead. And then there are the machetes. I'll make do. I have to."

Raina looked down at the churned earth that covered her elder sister. "But— but— _Vicky_!" She had held back her tears until everything was done that had to be done, but now she could cry.

She wept until she was dry eyed and sore throated, and then lay awake the rest of the night. The silence in the vault was oddly deafening, the absence of Victoria a black hole which sucked everything else into it. All the little sounds made by the presence of another living human were gone. Midway through the night, she got up, went into the bathroom, and turned on the light, squinting at herself in the mirror until her eyes adjusted. When her face was out of focus and blurry, she could imagine it was Vicky or Jo there in front of her, except that Vicky's hair was shorter, which made it stand out in ringlets rather than fall in waves. Their skin was the color of slightly tarnished silver, their hair brown-black, their eyes a muddy green. She gathered up her hair at the nape of her neck, letting it pooch out until it looked like Vicky's halo of curls.

What could you say of a face when it was not only your face but the only human face you had ever known? She had thought Joanna and Victoria were beautiful, but perhaps everyone you loved was beautiful, even when they weren't.

Missing Vicky was like missing one of her limbs; she could feel phantom pains where her sister wasn't.

Raina turned out the light and lay back down. It was not possible to sleep, so she made plans in her head.

In the morning she told Jonny, "When my sisters left the Vault, they were trying to make contact with other survivors and reconnect with Vault-Tec. That was their first priority. I am going to do things differently. My first priority will be to get more fusion cores. The second priority is to get more nutrient solution and parts for the cloning tank and start up a couple of baby sisters. It's good I'll have you to help when it comes time for them to be born. I know nothing about infant care."

"I agree when it comes to the matter of fusion cores, Miss Raina. There is no substitute for them. However, there is an alternative method to ensuring there are always caretakers for the Repository," Jonny-say-Quoi informed her. "That is, the, ah, natural way. I know it would not be ideal, and it would involve discomfort and even risk, but it is rather easier than cloning, or so I am given to understand. The matter is of academic interest only."

"You mean sexual reproduction, like the rabbits and chickens? It seems…unreliable. The baby could turn out to be _anything_. Still, that is how human beings reproduced for countless thousands of years and I will keep it in mind." Raina paused. "So, since I have no idea where to look for fusion cores, cloning supplies, or a Vault-Tec Industries representative, the first thing I want you to do is go out and scout for me. Take all the readings you can, take plant, water, and soil samples, look for signs of people, and if at all possible, find a good location for a base of operations on the surface."

"On the _surface_ , Miss Raina?"

"Yes. We have no idea how far or how near the Repository is to anywhere useful, and going back and forth every night will only draw attention to this place. The last thing I want is for the seed bank to fall into the wrong hands and end up destroyed or exploited. So—the location should be safe and secure, near a reliable source of water—clean, if possible—and with enough room for plantings, a chicken coop and a rabbit hutch."

"You mean to take the livestock with you?" the robot inquired.

"Yes. Enough of them to breed and trade with, at least. I believe that if I rearrange the planting schedules and program the agribots accordingly, I can be away from here for up to three months, but I'll have to spend two weeks catching up afterward. While you're out scouting, I'll be working on ammunition for the syringer." Work was good. Work would save her from loneliness.

"Yes, Miss Raina."

"It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. _Be careful_."

"Yes, Miss Raina."

A/N: So I've been trying to turn Cold-Blooded into a novel, with mixed results, and now I've started playing Fallout 4. Apparently I need a break from novelization, and this is it. I should add I'm new to Fallout, and I don't know where all this is going to go as yet. I make it up as I go along. Next chapter will take Jonny-say-Quoi up to the surface, where he will meet at least one character from F4!

There really is a Concord, Massachusetts Seed Repository, BTW, although here and now it is a resource for gardeners' heirloom seeds. I always strive for accuracy.


	2. Jonny-say-Quoi Goes Exploring

The Repository Vault had been built under the Concord Free Public Library, and quite a few surplus copies of books had made it into the Vault before the world ended. Very few of those left in the Library itself had survived, between being burned and soaked into solid masses of wood pulp by rain through the holes in the roof. Jonny-say-Quoi tut-tutted at the mess as he left the building. He wasn't expecting much of the town proper to be intact, and indeed it wasn't. The wreckage of the town was populated by packs of wasted, skinny feral mongrels which snarled and tried to bite him, and the few people he saw were the human equivalent, which snarled and tried to bludgeon him.

Had the other Miss Queens who left the Vault over the years run into such creatures, human or canine? Was that why they all failed to return? It grieved him to think so. Picking his way through the rubbish-choked streets, he spiraled outward through the town center, analyzing the air quality. The oxygen levels were low, but not too low to support life, obviously. He was more concerned about the lack of any vegetation beyond dead, scrubby weeds.

Unless his chronometer was unpardonably wrong, it was mid-May, when spring should be at its height, but it looked more like the dead of winter. He saw not a leaf on a tree nor any green and growing thing—unless one counted some of the cockroaches, bloated till they were the size of breadboxes. Some of them were green, and very aggressive, too.

After spending a couple of days exploring Concord very thoroughly, he decided there was nowhere in the town itself which was either safe or suitable for Miss Raina to establish a base, and broadened his search to the surrounding area. About eight miles from the town limits, he found a Red Rocket Truck Stop near the banks of a creek. It was in fairly good condition and could, he thought, be made habitable.

More interesting than the truck stop was the dog he found there. Instead of a scabby starveling mutt with a narrow brain pan, it appeared to be a purebred German Shepard with meat on its frame, a cared-for coat, and intelligent eyes. Instead of trying to savage him as the mongrels in the city had done, it barked sharply and waited for him to respond. That it recognized him as an entity equivalent to a human spoke well for its cognitive skills.

"Good dog!" he said to it, extending a mechanical hand. "Nice dog. What are you doing out here? Are you all alone?" It had to be owned by someone, as it was in perfect health.

The dog whined, and advanced carefully to nose Jonny-say-Quoi's hand, looking up at him with hopeful eyes. The wagging tail and cringing posture were submissive behavior—this dog understood what it was to live among humans and robots both. "Good dog!" It relaxed and allowed him to pet it and scratch behind its ears.

In this world, it was probably a very valuable animal. But if its human were newly dead… "Where is your master, boy? Your human? Where is he or she?"

The dog whined and led him down to the water's edge, where a cluster of hugely bloated flies—each the size of a seagull—were clustered around a—oh dear. A corpse, writhing with maggots. "That's what happened to him, is it?" Poor man." He killed the flies and built a cache of stones over the body while the dog watched, whimpering sadly as his human was covered from view.

Since he was by the water anyway, Jonny took readings, and discovered it was radioactive but not very. It could be purified.

"I believe you should come with me. Do you agree?" Jonny said to the dog.

The dog seemed to understand, because he barked and willingly followed Jonny back to the truck stop. On investigating the interior, he concluded from the signs of habitation that the dog and his owner must have lived there. The garage had an intact workshop furnished with tools, there was a filthy and decaying mattress in a closet area, and a rug which was half dog fur at the foot of it. There was a toilet with two buckets of water by it, suggesting that even if there was no running water, a bucket of water poured down it would effectively flush it. The roof did not appear to leak. Definitely a potential base.

However, the area was still as bare as a bleak December. All the trees were dead, and precious little else was alive. That could be fixed, especially since the openness of the site would require some sort of fencing. That was what the Sleeping Beauty roses had been bred for. A hedge of them would daunt anything short of an armored tank with napalm throwers.

Then the ugliest rodents ever to exist attacked, erupting from the ground and swarming the building. They could not harm him, of course, so he swung into the fray with vigor, killing three or four of them while the dog took care of as many on his own. Jonny absolutely had to secure that animal for Miss Raina, for her sake and for the dog's, so he cleaned and chopped up some of the rodents—were they rats, moles, or some ungodly bastardization of the two? Then he fed the dog, speaking to him soothingly and petting him while he did so. That should foster a bond between them.

Afterward he cleaned up the rest of the dead animals and made a start on the rest of the station. Whoever the late tenant was, his living area was as messy as his workshop was tidy. A box of Abraxo cleaner helped. While he worked, he observed that the dog was quite able to let himself in and out of the building and had been trained to do his business in a particular area. A perfectly mannered gentleman, that animal!

Once the truck stop began to meet his standards of clean and tidy, Jonny-say-Quoi decided to look further. Best to know who the neighbors were, if any.

There was a bridge not far from the stop which led to a suburb called Sanctuary Hills. "A good omen?" he asked. The dog followed him over the structure and into a cul-de-sac of houses, some of which were not complete ruins. Down in the creek, he saw a few waterplants with showy red leaves growing, and took one, roots and all, in a container of water. As the first thriving plant life he had found, Miss Raina would want to analyze it thoroughly. Following the course of the creek upstream, he found a few other living plants—something which appeared to be a wild carrot with orange flowers, a plant with dull lavender-blue flowers, some sort of gourd, and, quite surprisingly, a mutfruit growing wild.

That made him pause even while taking samples. The mutfruit had taken several Miss Queens a century to develop, splicing genes and crossing strains until they came up with a hardy, radiation resistant plant which produced nutritionally balanced fruit in abundance at least nine months out of the year. This wild version _could not_ have sprung up spontaneously. That meant the seeds had gotten there somehow.

Miss Juliana and Miss Constantia had both taken fruit, seeds and seedlings with them when they left. This was the evidence that they had not done so in vain, the first evidence of them in the outside world. What had happened to them?

Jonny went back up to the suburb, planning to investigate the houses to see if there was anything of use in them. Much to his surprise, he saw another Mr. Handy obsessively clipping at a dead hedge and talking to himself.

"Hello!" he called to the other Mr. Handy.

"Whatho?" exclaimed the strange robot. "Do my optical sensors deceive me, or are my memory banks crosscircuted? Are you real?"

"Yes. I am Unit D3an9knto9we, known to my humans as Jonny-say-Quoi. And you are?"

"Codsworth. Do come in. I apologize for the state of the house…." The house was in fact, the cleanest place Jonny had been since he left the Repository. Furniture debris littered the home where the sofa and chairs had fallen apart where they stood, but the floor was otherwise clean and dusted. He told the other robot so.

"Oh, thank you. One does what one can to pass the time. But where are my manners? Can I offer you a top-up of your fuel? And what of your dog?"

Jonny declined politely. "Nothing for me, thank you. I fed the dog earlier and he drank from the stream. How long have you been here on your own, old chap?" he asked, extending an optical sensor to survey the living room.

"Two hundred and ten years, or close to it," Codworth went on to relate how his humans had evacuated to the local vault while the bomb was falling. He had lost three of them—husband, wife, and their infant son. "One simply has to keep going," he concluded. "And they, or their descendants may emerge at any time, so I must be ready and on hand."

"Have you never thought to look for yourself?" Jonny asked his counterpart.

"No. No, I simply couldn't. It would be too painful. While one has doubt, one has hope, you see. But what about you? Have your humans survived?"

"Yes, although only one of them remains." Since Codsworth had been so forthcoming, he in turn explained how Dr. Theodosia had been in the vault already, doing maintenance with his help, when the bomb hit, and how the others assigned to the Repository had been so irradiated by the time they reached it that all of them had passed away within two years, how she had cloned herself and what had happened, up to the present moment in time.

"How wonderful! There will be someone civilized in the area again. I can hardly wait. Would you like my assistance in setting the truck stop to rights? One so much suffers without something to _do."_ Codsworth asked wistfully.

"Of course, old chap." Jonny told him.

"But only until my family returns, of course. Then they will need me." Codsworth said, proud, half-mad, but stalwart.

"Of course…."


	3. Making Friends

Warning: Marijuana in this chapter. I figure if you play Fallout you're mature enough to handle that. *cough* Hancock *cough*. It's not going to turn into either Weeds or Breaking Bad, I promise.

* * *

Raina was not looking forward to moving the manure pile, ripe with chicken and rabbit droppings decomposing into fertilizer. Hopefully Jonny-say-Quoi would come back and tell her the ground was fertile enough that she wouldn't have to enrich it immediately, but she wasn't counting on it. In the meantime, she was turning out the contents of the old stockroom looking for carrying crates to transport the chickens and rabbits, and wondering about how people went about finding someone to have a child with in the post-nuclear war era.

There were plenty of books about courtship in their Vault, and she deeply loved classics like _Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, The Phantom of the Opera,_ and _Wuthering Heights_. However, diverse as they were, one thing they had in common was that they had already been old-fashioned when the Vault was sealed. A great deal of social change had happened since then, and with the total breakdown of society, who knew how people went about it now?

Well, some things would never change. The instinct behind mate selection was based a lot on health and fertility. Simple science. In a woman, fertility depended a lot on her age. Raina was twenty five and had always enjoyed good health. She ought to be able to find _some_ man who was willing…

A grinding sound interrupted her thoughts. The Vault was opening, and then she heard Jonny calling her name. "Miss Raina?"

"I'm in Stockroom One!" She clambered over the boxes and equipment to greet him. An odd clicking noise accompanied him down the hall—had he been damaged while he was gone?

No. She stopped dead to stare at the black and tawny creature that was trotting along behind him.

" _What_ is _that_?" Jonny stopped, and the animal did too, sitting down on its haunches and cocking its head to the side to study her.

"A miracle in the form of a dog. A German Shepard, to be precise. I found him at a place I judged to be a very suitable base. In my estimation, he is as far above the ordinary dog in intelligence as you are above the average human." It was not flattery. Doctor Theodosia Queen had had an IQ in the genius range, so of course her clones did as well.

Jonny-say-Quoi went on, "He recognized me as a fellow creature capable of interaction, he is fiercely protective in the face of threats to his companion, he is thoroughly house-trained, and has even been taught to find useful items while scavenging. Moreover, he can sit up and shake hands on command. His master is dead, poor fellow. Rather than leave such a treasure on his own, I brought him here in the hopes that he will be as good a companion to you as he has been to me and to his former master." The robot gestured to the dog, who gave an appealing whine.

"A dog? I've never—what do I do?" Raina asked.

"I would begin by kneeling and holding out your hand, and calling him. He likes being petted and scratched behind the ears."

"All right…" She did as Jonny suggested, "Here, boy? Good dog, nice dog?"

The German Shepard trotted up to her and sniffed her hand, then ducked his head under it and nudged as if to say, "Pet me! Pet me _now_!"

She did, cautiously at first, but then with confidence. He flopped down and rolled over on his back, looking at her upside down with liquid chocolate-caramel eyes, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as he smiled a doggy smile. It was an irresistible display of charm, and Raina was more than willing to charmed.

"Oh, he's beautiful!" She stroked his belly and scratched deeper around his jowls.

"Yes," Jonny said. "Now I suggest feeding him. Dogs are primarily carnivores, with some grain and vegetables such as they might ingest along with the innards of their prey. "

"I have some chicken soup I made yesterday," She got up and brushed off her knees. "I keep making as much as I used to when—Vicky was alive. So there's plenty. Follow me, boy."

The dog was very happy to follow her to the kitchen area and to gobble up a bowl of soup, after which he licked her hands as if in thanks. She restrained an impulse to recoil from the sliminess. "Vicky never let me make pets of any of the bunnies or chicks, because they were going to end up in the pot some day. But I always wanted to… I love him already. Um—do you think he'll be good around the rabbits and chickens, or will his carnivore instincts take over?"

"I have no idea," Jonny confessed. "However, we can see what he does here and now, if you're willing to risk a few of them…"

In the incubator room, Raina loosed half a dozen baby chicks on the floor, and they watched the dog very carefully. He sniffed the mobile balls of fluff as they swarmed around him, cheeping and peeping, looking somewhat bemused by all of it. Then he nudged them back into their box, one by one, until they were all safely inside. One outlier evaded him, running away under the table, and he went after it. Raina tensed up when he opened his mouth to engulf the chick, waiting for the inevitable crunch, but instead the dog came up to her, and nosed her hand. She opened it, and he dropped the chick, damp with saliva but thoroughly alive and unharmed, into her hand.

"Jonny, I think you were absolutely right. This dog _is_ a miracle. What's his name?"

"I've no idea. His master left no clue, and he can't very well tell me."

"Well, he needs a name befitting his dignity, his handsomeness and his character." Raina turned to address the dog, "Do you think you might like to be called…Prince? Or—no. Better still, how about 'King'? What do you say? King?"

The dog gave a happy bark and licked her hands again. "Then it's settled. Your name is now 'King'. Come on, King. Jonny, tell me all about what you saw and did…."

* * *

Five Months Later:

Raina shifted her grip on the shovel and waited, not moving a muscle. Growing things in the Real World had proven to be more challenging than growing them in an EnviroVault. The asphalt had to be pried up in chunks and carted off, the ground underneath dug over and enriched with manure and compost. Some plants refused to thrive outdoors no matter how much work she put into the soil, while other things took off like rockets.

Like the Sleeping Beauty roses, for example. They weren't long-stemmed beauties with no scent and the occasional elegantly shaped thorn. They were shrub roses, a cultivar of Rosa rugosa alba, with simple pink and white short stemmed flowers. They smelled like a heady mix of cinnamon, roses and cloves, and their canes were so thick with thorns that they looked fuzzy. Moreover, they grew fat, squashy rose hips full of Vitamin C, edible and tasty. And they were green. They were lush and vividly, vibrantly green, spreading out crinkled leaves to bask in the sun and pouring out oxygen in all directions.

The roses were everything they had been bred to be and more. They were growing four times as fast as they did in the EnviroVault, and she'd had to bring an agribot from the Repository to help Jonny keep trimming them or the truck stop would be overgrown inside of a month. And that was _with_ the radstags coming by to graze on them. The leaves were tasty enough for the mutated, two headed deer, but the roses themselves were like candy, judging by how they ate them. However much they ate, they never made a dent on the Sleeping Beauties.

One morning, she had gone out to find a two headed _cow_ out there cropping the roses, her belly swollen with a calf. It was friendly, so Raina led it inside her compound and made a pen for it. A couple of weeks later, she helped it birth that calf, and now there was plenty of milk for both of them—not to mention more manure for the pile.

Raina waited. So did King, whose keener nose and ears were quivering. In fact, his whole body was tense and alert. He abruptly jerked his head to the right, and Raina struck straight down at the spot, flattening the molerat's skull. She'd read about playing Whack-A-Mole, but never imagined she would ever get to do it. And the old stories were right. It _was_ fun. Scooping the rodent corpse up on the shovel, because there was no way she was going to eat the thing while there was something else, anything else to eat, she threaded her way through the bushes to throw the disgusting thing across the road.

In the distance, she spotted a Brahmin carrying a full load and a person trudging along beside it. It was Trashcan Carla. She waved until Carla returned her greeting, then ducked back in to get the goods she had carefully grown for trade. She also brought clean water, because the road was long.

Carla was waiting, a sour expression all over her face. "Hey. I don't wanna go repeating myself. Yeah, I got fusion cores. Three of 'em. But I don't trade in live animals, live plants, soft fruit or vegetables, eggs, or anythin' else you had last time. Unless you wanna sell your dog."

"No. There aren't enough fusion cores in the world to part with King," Raina shook her head, and she meant it. He was a dog in the same way that the Hope Diamond was a precious stone—so much better than any other that there was no equal to it. He had followed her out, and when she said his name, gave a happy bark and nosed her hand.

"That's what I figured," the trader nodded. Then she squinted up at the wall of Sleeping Beauty roses. "But—whoa, is this thing taller than last time! And so damn green! If you had seeds for this, then _maybe_ , but unless you got a ton of them, ya still won't be able to afford one fusion core. Hard stuff, like mutfruit, melons, dried corn, canned goods, ammo, that's what I mostly want. And you'd still need plenty of them to buy one core."

"No, none of those," Raina waved a hand in dismissal. "But last time you said you'd take chems."

"Last time was last time. This time I got Psycho, Buffout, Daddy-O, Daytripper, Med-X, Jet, Mentats in three flavors. You got anything that I don't?"

"Yes," Raina opened the box. "Cannabis." It was a compromise with her conscience. Marijuana was much less addictive than tobacco or alcohol, it had legitimate medical uses, and withdrawing from it was mild compared to most recreational drugs. In the world before, it had been legal, and in terms of impact on someone's general health, it was much less harmful than refined white sugar.

"That's—You're shitting me. Cannabis is _extinct_. No way is that really Maryjane."

"My family kept a plant growing under lights in our Vault. Try some," Raina offered her a joint.

"Only if you do, too." Carla raised a suspicious eyebrow.

"Sure," She had already tried it to be sure she had gotten a good strain and grown it properly. Her thoughts on it were that it was very nice, and the euphoria muted that missing-limb feeling Vicky's death still gave her, but then she had no inclination to go back to work afterward. That was a problem. She _needed_ to work.

But she understood the need to put Carla's mind at rest, and she had to have those fusion cores. So she lit up and took a few puffs.

Seeing that, the trader followed suite. "Okay, that's for real. Even though I'm not sure it's really marijuana, it's something. What have you got?"

"Four ounces, plus two dozen rolled. Twenty-two, now."

"I'll take all of it, but I'm going to have to give out the joints as tastes for the skeptical, like you did me. Plus I don't know who's going to want it, but if I can find somebody who goes by Goodneighbor…Anyway, I'll trade you one fusion core for the lot."

"Deal—but if it turns out you do want more, then the price is two—and don't tell people where I live." Raina bargained.

"Done." Carla handed over the fusion core, and Raina handed her the bottle of water.

"What, again?" the trader scoffed. "It's not that I'm turning it down, but you know, you could make a lot of caps off of good clean water like this, and instead you just give it away. You've got to learn better."

"You come out of your way to trade with me," Raina said. "I'm sure you get thirsty hiking out here. Besides, as you said, your Brahmin can't carry enough water to make trading in it worthwhile."

"Yeah, you're isolated out here," Carla shrugged, "but what the hell, I've got time. Anyhow, I've got to get going if I want to get to the Drumlin Diner by dark."

Raina seized that cue, as she actually wanted to talk to the older woman about a few things. "I was planning to go toward Concord today, so if you'd like some company the first part of the way, I could get going now."

"Eh, why not?" Carla replied. Smiling, Raina ducked back into the truck stop to get a few things.

* * *

A/N: This is the new version. Anyhow, my thanks to those who added this story to their favorites and follows. I would love to hear from any of you, no need to be shy.


	4. Harsh Words

A/N: Very minor spoiler concerning Trashcan Carla. Really, it's so small you may never even find it in game.

* * *

Technically, Carla should have reported Raina Queen to the Institute weeks before, yet she hadn't. Not yet. Raina had saved her from raiders, which was how they had first met. One moment this huge man was about to break the junk dealer's arm, the next, he was getting his head beaten in with a heavy shovel. The raiders probably wouldn't have killed her—emphasis on the probably—for the same reason that shepherds collected fleeces by shearing their flocks rather than skinning them. Wool grew back; skin didn't. But at her age, broken bones were no joke and might even be worse than killing her outright. So Raina's timely arrival had saved her a world of pain. That counted for something.

So Carla hadn't reported that a new Vault dweller had surfaced, not even though Raina had brought a lot of things with her that the Institute would be very, very interested in. Like roses, rabbits, chickens, and…cannabis sativa. The trader took another toke off the joint and looked at it appraisingly. It was good stuff, very mellow, especially in comparison to the chems they got today. People thought that stuff like chems, meds, and ammo were all old stock, pre-war, without wondering exactly how there was so much left after two hundred years, or why it was still good. The answer was, most of it came from the Clinic. Carla pinched out the joint and tucked the rest of it away for later, then leaned against a rusting car, awaiting Raina's return.

When the younger woman reappeared, she was wearing road leathers and piecemeal armor, with a satchel and canteens slung crossbody over her chest. She had a syringer with her, which Carla frowned at. Syringers lacked heavy stopping power, but who was she to tell Raina how to defend herself? After all, she did have her shovel and the trader could attest to how well she wielded it.

Then Raina's smell reached her. It wasn't that it was bad, it was just so _strong_. "What is that smell?" Carla asked, backing up.

"Insect repellent," Raina replied. "I make it out of plant oils. It keeps bloatflies, stingwings and bloodbugs at a distance. No good against radroaches, though, or anything else, and you can't let it touch painted surfaces or the finish comes right off."

"I believe that! I don't suppose you have any of that for sale? Hell, if it works you'd have more caps than you could count."

Raina grimaced. "I don't have enough to spare at the moment. Two, three years from now, maybe. Would you like to try it out? I wouldn't want you eaten alive on the road." She held out a little jar with some greenish yellow salve in it.

Carla looked at the stuff. "No. Thank you, though." As bad as it was at ten feet, she did not want to get any closer to it. The smell reminded her of lemon scented Abraxo.

"Well, if you change your mind, I still have it," Raina tucked the jar away, and they hit the road.

"So what's your story, anyhow?" Carla looked over at her companion. "You told me you were fresh out of your Vault when we met, and it was an Envirovault, meant to be self-sufficient, but not much besides that. What about your people? What made you leave?"

"I lost my sister Vicky several months ago. She was up on some rickety scaffolding and one of the bolts sheared through. She fell and hit her head. There were so many places and so many ways she could have landed and been all right, except maybe for some bruising or a broken ankle, but that wasn't what happened. She landed on her head, and I was left alone. We were the last two people in our Vault."

"What, the very last?" Carla asked.

"Yes. There never were very many of us, and the last generation was all girls."

"What about your father?" People resorted to strange measures when the population was dwindling, but Raina didn't show any obvious signs of chronic inbreeding, like six-fingered dwarfism or a lower jaw like a Brahmin's hoof.

"He died before I was born. I can't say I remember my mother, either. There was only me and my two older sisters, and both of them are gone. I'm the sole survivor." She smiled wryly. "My sisters and I looked very much alike. Practically triplets, only born several years apart. It was a shock to find that other people looked so different from us. Of course I knew it intellectually, but emotionally I wasn't quite prepared. I'm still adjusting."

"I'd have thought you all would have left long before that." Carla kicked a hubcap out of the way and watched it disintegrate into a puff of rusty flakes.

"My sister Jo did, when I was five. She never came back, and Vicky was too afraid to try going up to the surface. She had panic attacks just thinking about it. Umm…do you mind if I ask _you_ a question or two? I've only come across a few people since coming upside, other than the ones who are trying to kill me, and you're the only one I can say I actually know."

"Huh. Well, go ahead. Ask away. What do you want to know?"

"I want to have a family," Raina stated. "Understand, I'm not asking how babies are made or what goes where during sex. I know that already, through keeping chickens and rabbits. But until five months ago, I'd never left the Vault. I'd never seen or spoken to a man in my life, and I'm twenty-five."

Twenty-five? She looked a lot younger, on account of not being exposed to radiation. "Then what did you want to know?"

"How you find someone you want to have a family with. Like I said, other than raiders out to kill me, the only people I've encountered are caravaneers like you, their guards, and a couple of settlers. I spoke to them, although I was probably very clumsy about it."

"You didn't…outright _ask_ any of them if they would start a family with you, did you?" Carla asked, slightly horrified.

"No, I'm not _that_ ignorant. Not quite, at least. I know attraction isn't necessary for conception, but it would be nice if I was attracted to someone. I wasn't attracted to any of them, male _or_ female. I mean, maybe I would be happier if I conceived a child with a man but settled down with a woman. I have no reference point either way. I am, however, very sure I'm not asexual."

"Sometimes you sound like a scientist." Carla stated.

"I was trained to be a biologist, even if it was at home."

That explained a lot about Raina. She cast a glance over the younger woman, who was neither a great beauty nor especially plain. If put to it, the trader would have described her as attractive enough. She had an odd, almost greenish cast to her skin tone but her complexion was otherwise nice and clear. Her mouth was too wide and full, her nose and chin too long, but her eyes were beautiful. If she got her hair done in Diamond City and found a pretty outfit somewhere, Raina would turn quite a few heads.

Not that she would need to look good to get offers. She was obviously young and healthy. As soon as people learned she had lived the last twenty-five years in a Vault, she'd be fending off suitors. Carla told her so.

"Why?" Raina asked.

"A _lot_ of babies die on account of birth defects from exposure to radiation. Sometimes they're damaged in the womb, sometimes from their parents being exposed to it before they ever met. I'd say half die before they reach their first birthday. You're pretty much guaranteed to have good genes, so you can pick and choose. Don't throw yourself away. A few caravaneers and their guards, that's not exactly a lot of possible spouses to choose from. Knowing them like I do, since we're in the same business, I'm not surprised you weren't attracted. Get out and meet more people, maybe go to Diamond City, do more talking, get to know them—and don't worry too much about it. When you meet the right one, you'll know." She resorted to the tiredest cliché she knew at the end.

Actually, she was thinking hard about how to get Raina to the Institute. Intelligent, trained as a biologist, gifted in botany—the girl was practically made for the place. The problem was in making sure the Institute treated her right. Now that the old man they called 'Father' was known to be terminally ill, things were going crazy in there. Who knew what they would do? Make a synth of her and get rid of the original? The junk dealer wouldn't put it past them.

"Thank you, Carla," Raina said.

However, it couldn't hurt to lay the groundwork for the Institute here and now. Casting a sideways glance at the younger woman, Carla said, "Of course, it isn't just the babies that die. Sometimes the mother does, too. You'd want to have some kind of medic around, Where do you plan on settling down? Out here?"

"Yes," Raina replied. Her dog came running up with an ancient baseball in his mouth, wanting to play fetch, and she obliged.

"Could be a problem," Carla remarked. "There are places where the living is almost as good as it was before the bombs. Food you don't have to grow yourself, indoor plumbing, central heating, the works."

"I didn't know that," Raina pretended to throw the ball, and her dog ran wild, looking for it everywhere. "Where, exactly? Diamond City?"

"No, but near enough. I don't want to go saying until you're serious about it. Think it over."

"I will. In the meantime," Raina stopped and gestured at the road. They had reached the point where the road to Concord forked off to the left. A dead Brahmin sweltered in the sun there, its bloated stomach heaving despite the chunks missing from its side—.

It burst, and three huge bloatflies erupted from the body cavity. Raina swung into action, grabbing her shovel and swinging it in a deadly arc which splattered one fly across the crumbling roadway. The others dove toward her, but rather than swooping in to bite or shoot maggots at her, they swerved away, giving her a wide berth, heading for Carla. Of course—the insect repellent!

The dog leapt up, snagged on the fly like he had the baseball, and tore it to bits while Raina took down the third and last with her shovel.

Carla watched, then nodded. "You do all right, kid. That insect repellent stuff—mind if I try it now?"

"Not at all," Raina produced the jar from her satchel. "See you in a week?"

"Uh-huh," Carla said, tugging on her Brahmin' harness to turn her down the right road. "Rain or shine."


	5. Courage Under Fire

Preston Garvey flattened himself against the wall as the bullets wheeted past, wincing as one sent a fine haze of plaster dust into his eyes. Behind him, Mama Murphy was practically chanting, "And the Handmaiden of the Vault shall come anointed with cedar and with citron to lead us into Sanctuary, where there is a verdant garden planted, a green paradise where milk and honey—."

Whatever kind of chem the old lady had picked up when he wasn't looking, it had to be _strong_. What she was saying made no kind of sense, unless you knew something of the Bible. It wasn't that popular these days, mainly because it was clear the events from Revelations had come and gone, and those left on Earth were not the saved. However, he'd had a decent education, which was more than a lot of people could say, and he recognized jumbled up Scripture when he heard it.

"Old woman," Marcy Long gritted out from across the room, "will you _shut up_ already? Let us die without your damn voice babbling on and on in our ears."

"Nobody with us here now is dying today, or anytime soon," Mama Murphy assured the woman. "They're coming. I can see it. In fact," Mama smiled—he wasn't about to turn to see her face, but he could hear it in her voice. "They're here."

Preston realized that although the gunfire had not stopped inside the Museum of Freedom, the sounds from the street below had stopped. No more shooting, no more shouting.

He turned his head. There, among the rubble and the dead both recent and long past, was someone who hardly looked different from the raiders, because he or she wore road leathers and piecemeal armor. The person was creeping from cover to cover, avoiding possible lines of fire from the raiders in the museum, but then she or he was armed with a syringer rather than a real firearm.

Syringers were only good for slowing people down, not dealing real damage. However, if someone had one, it was a sure thing they made their own ammo for it. So: not a gunslinger. A chem trader? He didn't know. He didn't care. Help was help.

"Hey, you there, with the syringer! We're up here with a group of settlers and the raiders are about to reach us! Grab another gun and help us, please! There's a laser musket on the ground about ten yards ahead of you!"

The person nodded—he was about seventy-five percent sure it was a woman from the way she moved—and darted across the street in a cautious sprint. A dog followed closely at her heels, and soon they disappeared from view again.

The raiders redoubled their attack, forcing the Minuteman and the people he was so desperately trying to protect further down the hall into an office. However, he could hear when the raiders turned their attention from attacking to defending, their threats and bravado turning to paranoia and panic. He also heard the angry barks and snarls of a big dog, accompanied by howls of 'Yahhhgedditoffame!', followed by a crunch or a gurgle. Eventually, silence.

Silence inside the museum, anyway, except for someone, or more than one someone, picking their way through the building. "Hello? Anyone left alive?" a woman called out.

The uncertainty in her voice convinced Preston she was not a raider. "Here!" He nodded to Sturges to open the office door.

There she was, the one he'd seen from the window, accompanied by a dog he'd seen pictures of in books but never in life: a German Shepard.

"I don't know who you are," he said, in gratitude, "but your timing's impeccable. Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen."

"Glad to help. Raina Queen, agroecologist," the woman replied.

Marcy Long broke in, pointing to the canteens on Queen's bandolier. "Is that water?" she asked through cracked and dehydrated lips.

"Yes," the agroecologist replied.

"Please, let us have some! We ran out this morning!" Marcy pleaded.

"Of course," Raina Queen unclipped the two sturdy cans from the strap and passed one to Marcy, the other to Mama Murphy. "Are you hungry? I have some cornbread here." Her hand dipped into a satchel and came out with a parcel which she unwrapped and broke up into chunks.

"Thank you! We haven't eaten since yesterday." Jun Long took some of the bread. Mama Murphy passed Preston one of the canteens and, God be praised, a chunk of cornbread. Not a big chunk, but still it was food.

"The water's clean," Raina explained. "No rads, no bugs, no bacteria. I distil it myself. The bread is from last night, so it's a bit solid now."

"Solid is good," he said, with fervor. "Solid food is the best." He bit into it and chewed. Hunger always made food taste extra good, but this would have been good cornbread at any time. Rich, sweet, and golden yellow rather than bluish grey, it tasted better than anything he'd ever eaten in his life. The water tasted of nothing, but it was wet and it was water. "S'good," he said around a mouthful. "S' really, really good."

Mama Murphy was picking up cornbread crumbs with a wetted finger and devouring every morsel. "You've been afraid you'll fail your mother and your sisters," she said, in the voice that said the Sight was talking clearly, "but you won't. As you're feeding us now, you'll feed all the Commonwealth, and more, before you're through. That isn't all of your destiny, though."

Then the elderly woman squinted at the dog. "You've named him King," Mama Murphy said in surprise. The dog was sticking close to the woman with the syringer. "I didn't see that. He likes it better than 'Dogmeat'."

Raina Queen glanced down at her dog and then at Mama. "You know King? His owner was dead, so I guess we adopted each other. Who names a dog 'Dogmeat'?"

"It doesn't matter now. He's King, and he's chosen you," Mama said. "What's that smell?" she asked.

Sniffing the air, Preston got a whiff—a very _strong_ whiff of what she meant. It was a smell that made the eyes water, but not a nasty odor. It was more like industrial strength Abraxo plus something else, so clean it burned.

"Insect repellent," Raina Queen replied. "I make it myself. Keeps away bloatflies, stingwings and bloodbugs, though the bloatflies still spit from a distance. It's no good against radroaches, though. Or anything else. It's just cedar oil and citronella."

"Cedar…and citron," Preston said, remembering what Mama had said before. "Um, it seems ungrateful after you've fed us and helped us out already, but we're all in this together now. Those raiders had friends. They're even worse than that bunch, they're on their way, and they're going to be real mad when they see the dead. Now, we came here on account of what's on the roof. Sturges, this is your department."

Sturges duly explained about the crashed vertibird, the suit of power armor, and the minigun. He also explained that the armor needed a fusion core in order to function at all, and the agroecologist's face went pale and strained.

"Why am I the one who must do this?" she asked. "Is my life any less valuable than any of yours?"

"I know it isn't fair," Preston said, "but the only food and drink we've had in days is what you gave us now. None of us have the strength. After this, whatever help we can give, whatever you need or want done, just name it."

"I don't like heights," Raina said. "I never have."

"Don't worry," Sturges said, "When you're in power armor, you can fall any distance and walk away."

Mama's face now turned stark. "You better get going, Raina. Something big is coming, and it's angry. I've seen it."

"That isn't helpful," Raina said. "However, I have a fusion core with me already. Keep King here, I don't want him to follow me and get hurt. 'If it were done when tis done, t'were well it were done quickly.'" The last bit sounded like something she had learned, some snippet she recited.

While they were talking, eating and drinking, the raiders had returned. Now the gunfire and the jeers started up again.

She went. Mama Murphy held King by the collar, though he strained and whined to follow his owner.

"She's not going to be your Minutemen General, Preston. Not now, not ever," the old lady told him.

* * *

Up on the roof, Raina found the empty power armor, installed the fusion core, and watched it open like an orchid blooming.

Sturges had told her it was designed for use even by lowly privates in the military and moving in it would be instinctive, but what he did not say was that those privates had six to eight weeks of training in the use of power armor before they faced enemy fire in it, and he did not take into account the fact that the power armor had stood exposed to the elements for two hundred years.

The armor did not want to move. It groaned and screamed around her in protest. Instead of moving easily with her, it ground together for the longest time, then yielded and sent her staggering. Raina barely managed to grab the minigun before she tumbled from the museum roof. She landed face down on the sidewalk, which now had an armor sized impact crater in it. Scrabbling for purchase, she shoved herself up to a kneeling position. Pieces of the armor plating broke off and fell away, and she could taste blood in her mouth from where she'd bitten her tongue. She wasn't hurt, Sturges was right about that, but she had had the wind knocked out of her.

The raiders were jeering at her. "Widdle baby fall crash-go-boom?"

However, she had managed to keep hold of her syringer.

* * *

While they waited, they heard gunfire, then a huge crash which shook the building. King tore free of Mama's grip and darted out the door, then down the stairs.

Preston dashed for a window, and looked out to see a battle that would have been ludicrous if it were not so deadly. In the power armor, Raina moved like a Brahmin wallowing through thick mud, a target for all the raiders' potshots. However, she had the minigun and she was spraying bullets around wildly, gradually blasting the raiders to bits.

When they were all dead, he opened his mouth to cheer, but then…

His fingers gripped the rotting window frame, rending it into splinters, and his heart hammered in his chest because now he heard a roar which made him want to curl up and hide under something immovable, because everybody in the Commonwealth knew what made a sound like that. A deathclaw.

It burst from the sewer like a demon spat forth from the bowels of hell. Raina was the only living, moving thing close to it, and so it focused on her. She raised the minigun, peppering it with bullets, but the rounds were no more to it than birdshot to a Brahmin. It struck out at her, sending her sprawling across the street, coming to a skidding halt. If she were not in power armor, she would have broken bones.

She struggled to get up, but the ungainly, damaged armor wouldn't let her. She was a turtle on its back in the hot desert sun, fighting to right itself.

The deathclaw seized her and shook her, the minigun crashing to the ground as she lost her grip. The armor plates were buckling and breaking—. It threw her across the street again, where she wound up wedged between two rusting cars. The deathclaw followed, and now it tore the armor to pieces, sending the helmet flying as it shook her like a kitten playing with a catnip toy.

"God," Preston groaned. "She helped, and I got her killed. I got—."

Mama Murphy swatted him across the back of his head. "Keep watching."

Then Raina Queen appeared in the corner of vision. How had she done it? When had she slipped out of the armor? From behind the cover of a car, she raised her syringer. It wasn't likely anything she had in it could do more than irritate the beast.

He couldn't even hear the chuffs of the syringer firing over the roaring and the clashing, but he saw what happened. Three darts, four darts hit it. Then the deathclaw stopped, swayed, fell over, and began convulsing, its claws tearing up chunks of asphalt. Bloody froth poured from its mouth, its nostrils, its eyes and even its ears. It tried to roar, but what came out of it was merely a rattle.

Then a final sigh and welling of blood from its mouth, and the deathclaw lay still.

Okay. He'd just learned something. Syringers _were_ good for more than just slowing people down...

* * *

A/N: So, after some editing, this version without Nora is posted. Lots has changed, and it would be a good idea to go back and re read chapters 1, 3, and 4 as well as this one..


	6. Milk and Honey

"I hit the release catch when I was stuck between the cars," Queen explained. She was shaky, her skin ashen. "Then it—that—whatever it was."

"A deathclaw," Preston supplied. "How is it you don't—never mind. What did you shoot it with? What kind of poison was that?"

"Something of my own," she said. "I made it to kill supermutants with one dose. I didn't know there were worse things. I think I hate that armor. And I feel sick." She sat down on the crumbling curb and put her head down.

"But you killed it," he said.

"Everything Topside keeps trying to kill me," she said. "Days like this, I wish I'd never left the Vault."

"You're new out of your Vault?' he asked. "I didn't think there were any sealed Vaults left in the Commonwealth. No wonder you don't know what a deathclaw is. Still, you're doing better than a lot of Vault dwellers do, Topside. A lot of them can't handle open spaces."

"I can't handle heights or huge things trying to kill me," she said. "I'm not very brave."

"You were scared but you kept your head and you didn't run or falter. You killed it. That sounds like courage to me," Preston told her.

"Not from where I'm sitting." Her dog came over, whining sympathetically, and licked her face. "….Okay, King, I'm all right now." Raina got up and went over to the remains of the power armor, where she retrieved the fusion core. "I'm going to go get that fusion core from the basement. Then—where are you going?"

"A place called Sanctuary, about seven or eight miles from here," he told her.

"Really?" she cocked her head a little. "That's right over the bridge from my steading. I guess I'm going to accompany you home."

"Thanks," he put all the warmth he could into the word. "I truly wasn't exaggerating about all of us being weak from hunger and thirst. We left Quincy with nothing. There were twenty of us a month ago, before we lost the town. Yesterday we were eight. Now we're down to five." He could not keep the roughness from his voice as he said those words.

"But from Sanctuary," Mama Murphy said, "the common wealth of the Commonwealth will grow and spread."

"All right," Raina Queen said in the voice which meant, 'I don't know what's going on but I'm going to humor the old lady.' "I'm going to go and get the fusion core now."

While she was gone, he and Sturges looted the raiders' bodies for whatever valuables and ammunition they could find, noting while they did so that many of them had died exactly as the deathclaw had. Queen's poison was quick, ruthless and like nothing either of them had ever seen.

However, by the time she returned, they had a nice pile of caps and various bits and pieces gathered together, things like lockets, rings, and cigarette lighters.

"Here you are. I figure caps will always come in handy," Preston said as he handed them to her.

"Thank you," she said as she accepted them. "The quickest way to home from here is to go down this road…"

Seven or eight miles, in their condition, was three hours on foot, maybe more. As Preston trudged the long and weary way, he fell into a mental fog, like sleepwalking. Just one step after another, as the afternoon dwindled and night approached. It was full dark before he heard running water, heard Raina Queen say she would catch up to them, the town was just over the bridge but stick to the left hand railing, the right side was collapsing. Wood underfoot instead of asphalt, then asphalt again, then concrete. A chair.

He sat down. Someone started a cooking fire, but what was there to cook? Time was stretched every which way. Then a Mr. Handy was there in front of him, offering him a plate of food.

"Uh—what is it?" he asked.

"Scrambled eggs, sir."

"No, s'not. Eggs ar'n this color." His words were slurred with exhaustion. "Don' smell like this, either."

"Yes, they are, sir. Eat this up, and then there'll be a nice soothing mug of herbal tea for you. Just the thing before bedtime. Not that there's much in the way of beds…."

He ate. What kind of eggs were these? Not mirelurk, because they didn't taste muddy. Or radscorpion, which had a sour tang to them. They were real good, though. And better still, there was a great big fluffy mound of them. He drank something afterward, and then he woke up to a bright yet foggy morning, still in that same chair. Someone had put a blanket around his shoulders, a very fuzzy blanket of a material he had never seen before.

"Ah, good morning, Mr. Garvey! Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Codsworth, and Miss Queen has suggested that I should acquaint you with the neighborhood and help you settle in. She has also invited all of you to her homestead for breakfast, once you are all awake. Mistress Murphy is the only one still asleep at this time. If you could follow me this way, I can show you what there is in the way of toilet facilities…"

Codsworth led him around the cul-de-sac of houses, most of which were still standing and intact, explaining who had lived where before the war. Only one house was off-limits as far as living in it was concerned, according to the friendly robot—the house his family had lived in. According to Codsworth, Miss Queen and her Mr. Handy had helped him tidy up in exchange for his help with her place, which explained why there was so little debris and trash around. All of that had been piled up in a heap atop a collapsed house, ready to be salvaged as necessary.

Along the way he met up with Sturges, who confirmed that this was about as good a place as could be found in the Commonwealth, especially since the only neighbors, Raina Queen and her people, whoever they were, were friendly. The Longs had found some melons growing wild and were weeding the ground around them, a good start. Eventually they wound up back at the house where they had started out, and Mama Murphy was awake, shuffling around in the way old people did in the mornings when their joints were stiff.

The fog roiled around them as they crossed the bridge. A small herd of radstags were clustered around a tall green wall, and Preston unslung his musket, bringing one down. Now they would have meat for a few days, and he could make Queen a present of a haunch of it. It didn't come anywhere near close to saving their lives and killing a deathclaw, but it was a start. He and Sturges picked it up to carry between them, lashing the legs together.

Then they grew close enough to see what the tall green wall was. It was alive, a hedge of plants at least ten or twelve feet high, green as the landscapes in pre-war paintings, and it was studded with hundreds of pink and white flowers which spread a spicy-sweet scent in the air.

"Where did this come from?" Sturges asked, reaching out to touch the leaves. "Ow!" He drew back his hand. "Careful, it bites."

Mama Murphy said, sounding wistful, "When I was a little, little girl, I found an empty bottle in an old house that said 'Toilet Water'. It didn't smell like a toilet, but my mama told me it was what they used to call perfumes that ladies put on when they went out in evening gowns. It still smelled sweet inside, like this."

"Well, we're not getting any answers standing here like this," Preston said, and raised his voice. "Hello? Ms. Queen?"

"Hello, there!" A Mr. Handy, not Codsworth, but a shiny chrome model in better condition, popped out of a gap in the hedge they had not seen until then. "Right this way. I am Jonny-say-Quoi, assistant to the Queen family. Mind the roses; they have thorns."

Roses. So that was what they were… They followed Jonny through the gate, and stopped dead in their tracks, all five of them, because if the hedge was amazing, what was inside of it was nothing short of overwhelming. Green. Plants. More plants. Still more green, still more plants, different shades of green, punctuated here and there with flowers, fruits, vegetables such as they had never seen. All Preston had ever known in the way of food crops were the same few plants that everyone grew—corn, carrots, gourds, melons, razorgrain, tatos and mutfruit. Everything else was extinct.

Not in Raina Queen's homesteading. Here there were golden flowers the size of dinner plates, tiny plants with little red fruits peeking out from under their leaves, big glossy purple black fruits hanging off of bushy plants, lush green leaves, more and more miracles sprouting from the earth. Tiny insects flew back and forth, rooting around in the flowers. They were a little like stingwings, but not aggressive and with tufts of yellowish fur on their midsections. There was a pen where small long-eared animals nibbled leaves and carrots. In another pen, birds pecked at grain and strutted about, fluffing themselves.

"Are those _chickens and rabbits_?" Marcy Long asked.

"I think they must be," Sturges replied. A cow lowed—at least it was a normal two headed Brahmin.

"Right this way. Miss Raina awaits you in the house," Jonny-say-Quoi pointed to the truck stop in the center of this paradise from another time. "Breakfast this morning is pancakes with honey butter, a compote of fresh fruit, and rabbit sausage. I hope you brought your appetites, because we've made plenty!"

"What did I tell you?" Mama Murphy prodded Preston's ribs with her elbow. "A verdant garden where milk and honey flow freely."

"Okay, I believe you now. Jonny, where did all this _come from_?" Preston asked.

"From our Vault, of course. Miss Raina's vault was an Envirovault, intended to be completely self-sufficient. A small ecosystem all of its own, complete with pollinators such as bees. They were very tetchy about being moved, but now that they're here, they're producing quite a lot of honey."

"But…she saved—her family saved all of this? Who else lives here?"

"Miss Raina is the last of her family, sir. It is only she, King, and I myself."

They made their way along the path, still goggling at everything that surrounded them. "I wish—I wish our son could have lived to see this," murmured Jun Long. His face was streaming with tears.

His wife squeezed his arm, the first loving gesture Preston had seen her make since their son died. "Me, too."

There was a table set under the truck stop's canopy, and Raina was putting dishes of fruit at each place. She looked very young and radiant.

"Ms. Queen," Preston tipped his hat, an automatic gesture. "Uh—Thank you for your invitation to breakfast. Is there somewhere we can put this?" He patted the radstag.

"Around the back, there." She pointed.

"Thank you," he said, and he and Sturges went and left it there.

When he came back, he took a seat to Raina's left, across from Mama Murphy.

"It feels like I'm still dreaming," he said once he'd sat down. The dishes were reassuring, because they were the sort of old, mismatched and chipped plates and bowls one might find anywhere in the Commonwealth. "Ms. Queen—this is—. You're rich. You're the richest person I've ever met or heard of. Even in Diamond City, they don't have anything like this. Not even a tenth of it."

"Then you're rich, too," she said, looking around at the table. " _All_ of you are rich, because everything I have here, I'm sharing with you. I'll teach you how to grow the things you don't know, I'll give you seed stock, chickens, rabbits—half or more than half of what I've got here. In the case of the rabbits, you'll be doing me a favor." She picked up a spoon and started in on the fruit.

Preston followed suit. It was, of course, amazing. The berries burst on his tongue, explosions of unfamiliar flavor. "How so, with the rabbits?" The others were eating too, with expressions of bewilderment.

"Ever heard the expression, 'At it like rabbits?' I thought I'd be able to trade them, so I let them breed. I've got dozens now." She picked up a pitcher of milk and poured a mug, then handed it to him to pass on. "You can eat them, but you can also comb them and make yarn and felt from their fur. I've got so many I could brush them all day and never get anything else done."

"What is this going to cost us, all this that you're giving us?" Marcy Long asked from down the table, her voice strident and belligerent.

"Nothing," Raina replied. "You'll have to do the work of growing and tending everything, but the seeds, plants and animals are yours for the asking."

"Why? Why be so generous? You don't know us. You don't owe us anything." The woman had a harsh laugh. "We owe you already!"

"Because," Raina's brow furrowed as she tried to put something into words. "We—my family— _kept_ these things, but not to them hoard like a dragon sitting on a pile of gold. These things belonged to everyone once, and they will again. We kept them safe in order to give them _back_. My whole life, the lives of all my family, that was what we worked for. I couldn't keep all this or charge anything for them. It would be _wrong_. Just be as generous with what you have when someone else comes along who needs these things as well."

It was clear she meant it and believed it to the bottom of her soul. Maybe it was naïve of her, maybe it was stupid and foolish, but if it was, then it was the same sort of stupid and foolish that led Preston to join the Minutemen.

Thank you, Ms. Queen," Preston broke the stunned silence. "We will surely do that."

"Ah, but I haven't told you what I _do_ want you to do to pay me back, yet." She flashed him a mischievous smile. "You travel around, don't you? Well, wherever you go, I want you to plant things. I'll give you the seeds and rooted cuttings. There is no ecosystem to speak of, no trees or undergrowth in the woodlands, and that has to change. Thank you, Jonny," she said to her bot, who was holding several plates of steaming food. "Please start with our guests first."

* * *

A/N: If you haven't reread chapters one, three, four and five, you'll want to. Big changes. Thank you for checking out my story!


	7. The Ripple Effect

The next few weeks, everyone learned a lot. The first day, it was all about pointing to unfamiliar plants and asking, 'What is that? What part do you eat? How do you cook it? How do you grow it?', and listening to Raina's explanations.

After that, it was about the work. It was October and at the end of the growing season, when you wouldn't think it was a good time to plant things, but apparently that was the perfect time to transplant because then the plants would suffer less shock, or something. Preston wasn't clear on the details. Plus there were roofs to patch so they didn't leak, beds to be built, mattresses to be stuffed, chicken coops and rabbit hutches to be constructed, and all of this before the frost set in.

Yet no one really complained, not even Marcy Long, because for one thing, they were too exhausted, and for another, when someone gives you the deed to your very own gold mine, hands you a pickaxe and starts helping you dig, it would be churlish and ungrateful. Raina worked alongside them with the same ardor she put into her own land, steadfast and cheerful.

Certain people soon settled naturally into particular jobs. Preston went out and found a friendly Brahmin roaming free, led it back, and taught it to accept a harness, rooting up stumps and pulling a plow. Sturges was good at repairs and construction. Mama Murphy immediately took on the care of the chickens and rabbits, keeping track of which hens laid the most and biggest eggs. Those hens got a rooster, so the next generation of chicks would also lay well. The mediocre performers were kept on for egg production, and the culls wound up in the pot. Most of the males were made into capons, and Preston kind of shut his ears when that process was explained, as it involved…well, no man liked to think of that happening to another male creature, whatever the species. The Longs worked the land, as simple as that.

And yet it was not enough. There were people out there in danger, in want of the clean water and good food they enjoyed, and the last Minuteman could not rest easy in his bed knowing that…

* * *

On the Prydwen, Paladin Danse was performing armor maintenance when a breathless young Squire dashed up, saluted, and delivered the message, "SirPaladinDanseSir! YouaretoassembleyoursquadintheaftforaspecialbriefingwithSeniorScribeNeriahpriortodeploymentSir!"

Danse chuckled. "Take a deep breath and try that one again, soldier."

The youngster obeyed. "Sir, Paladin Danse, Sir! You are to assemble your squad in the aft for a special briefing by Senior Scribe Neriah prior to deployment, Sir!"

"Thank you. When is this supposed to take place?"

"Oh! Right now, Sir!"

"Message received." In very short order, he and the rest of Recon Squad Gladius: Knight-Sergeant Dawes, Knights Rhys, Worwick, Keane, and Brach plus Senior Scribe Haylen, were assembled in the Field Research Station. Elder Maxon was overseeing from an upper catwalk; when Danse made eye contact with him and saluted, he nodded in acknowledgement.

Danse turned his full attention to Senior Scribe Neriah, who was standing next to a scribe in a wheelchair. The man looked somewhat familiar, but as he was swathed in bandages and had plaster casts on half his body, it was hard to tell.

"Good afternoon," Neriah began. "Many of you know Scribe Faris. He is, thus far, the only member of Recon Squad Artemis to be recovered alive, subsequent to his hacking into the Revere Satellite Array and successfully transmitting a distress signal to us here. While extracting him, we made an important discovery. Demonstrating will be more effective than explaining. Scribe-technicians, please bring in the specimen."

Three techs brought out a feral ghoul; its pungent odor hit his nose a moment before that, a combination of unwashed bodies, rotting meat and sewage. It was restrained with three collars attached to poles around its neck, each managed by a tech.

"Paladin Danse," Neriah stated. He turned his attention back to her. She was holding a syringer. "Please take this weapon and shoot the specimen. Aim carefully and shoot nothing _but_ the specimen. I know most of the Brotherhood dismiss syringers as no more than popguns, but the ammo in this is no joke."

"Roger that," he replied, taking the syringer. He aimed and fired, striking the ghoul above the heart.

The effect was immediate: the feral jerked, then swayed on its feet. If not for the three techs holding it upright, it would have fallen. Then it went into a seizure, and bloody froth bubbled out of every visible orifice, before a final gout of blood welled up out of its mouth, and it went limp. Limp and dead, inside of ten seconds.

"What was that? A disease?," he asked. Ghouls were notoriously tough to kill, as the radiation which made them what they were also granted them an unnatural vigor. They were immune to most contagions and resisted even huge doses of chems.

"No. A poison. Scribe Faris, please relate your account of what happened at the Array."

A poison? A poison which could kill a ghoul with one hit would be a tremendous asset to the Brotherhood's mission.

"By the time we neared the Array, the squad was reduced to only Paladin Brandis and me. At the time, I had been shot in the leg and was bleeding. Walking would have accelerated the blood loss, so the Paladin helped me to shelter and went back to try and rescue Knight Astlin. Unfortunately, the Array was being used by supermutants as a camp. They found me and took me to the Array, planning on eating me."

The scribe produced a rictus grin. "Except they disagreed on whether to eat me fresh or age my body for a few days. I was up in one of their shacks, thinking I was about to see what my own intestines look like, when the mutants squabbling over me got distracted. Someone else had showed up."

Faris paused. "I didn't get a good look at them, I was at the wrong angle for that. Whoever it was, they were dressed like a typical scavenger. Medium height, maybe a little taller. Medium build, not fat or thin. Complexion—neither very dark or very pale. Medium. Not a ghoul, though. The cheek I saw was smooth and beardless, so it was either a woman or a very young man. They were armed with a syringer, and they had a shovel on their back."

"A shovel?" Senior Scribe Haylen asked.

"Yes, ma'am. A shovel. They also had a dog with them. Not a stray mutt, either. I called to them for help, but what with me being faint with blood loss and the mutants being so loud, they didn't hear me. Anyhow, they started taking out the supermutants, one by one, with the syringer. They worked from cover—they had very good stealth moves—and went through the camp, picking them off. There was one standing over me, and I saw when it got hit with the dart. What happened to it was exactly what happened to the ghoul just now. It was a one hit kill."

That started a murmur throughout Recon Squad Gladius. A mini nuke might kill a supermutant with one hit, _if_ you were lucky. It also added to the radiation in your immediate vicinity, which meant you picked up some of it. A reliable one hit kill when fighting supermutants would be even more valuable than one for ghouls.

Faris continued, "Once they were out of sight, I lay there listening to the camp getting quieter and quieter. I tried calling out to them, but by then I'm thinking they were out of earshot. If the camp didn't stink so much, maybe the dog could have smelled me. I crawled over to the mutant that was standing over me on the off chance it had something on it I could use, and it happened to have a stimpak. When I was feeling strong enough, I went down and managed to boost my distress call to the last working transmitter. The rescue unit came and got me. That's all. As far as what happened to Brandis and Astlin, I have no knowledge of them."

Senior Scribe Neriah took over again. "The rescue unit went through the camp and recovered both expended darts from the bodies and a few unexpended darts where the shooter missed. They were brought to me for analysis. What I found out is…unprecedented."

"Why?" Danse asked.

"Because it isn't a chem. It's organic. Not only is it organic, it's _plant based_. It's a blend of ricin, which is responsible for the bleeding, nicotine—the same nicotine which is found in tobacco—which in addition to its own toxicity, accelerates the effect of the ricin, and anabasine, which is related to nicotine and induces asystole, which is to say, it simply stops the heart completely. All these substances were not only pure, they were highly concentrated. More to the point, ricin comes from the castor bean plant, which was once widely cultivated as a decorative garden plant, despite being the most poisonous plant in the world. Anabasine is from the tree tobacco plant. Both are supposed to be extinct in the United States. They're not native to the Commonwealth and would die out if someone introduced them in the wild."

She paused. "Probably. Climate change may have altered the area enough to where they would survive. For two hundred years, there has been no evidence of either of these plants, and now we find a compound with both of them together. This is a compound which would have to have been made by someone with a sophisticated knowledge of plant toxicology and considerable laboratory skills. This is not something someone could stumble over while whipping up a batch of homebrew Psycho."

"Is it from the Institute?" Danse asked immediately.

"Possible, but I doubt it," Neriah replied. "A close examination of the darts themselves indicates they were hand-tooled and crafted individually. The Institute would have uniform, machine made darts."

"So in addition to your original orders," Elder Maxon spoke for the first time, "you are to seek out the shooter who unknowingly saved Faris, and if they are not the one who made those darts, then through them, track down the one who is making them.

"You are to recruit them into the Brotherhood. Someone who can formulate a compound which takes out a supermutant with one dose is someone we need working for us. We want their goodwill as well, so you are authorized to offer them the position of senior botany scribe here on the Prydwen, a thousand cap signing bonus, and a place for their family in the civilian quarters of our home base. If they don't have a family, then emphasis that there are plenty of attractive, unattached people in the Brotherhood. If that's not what they want, find out what is, and offer it to them. Get them to sign on, then bring them, all their materials, and their equipment here.

"Provided, of course, they're not actually a ghoul, synth or other undesirable. Then you're to recover and commandeer their formulas, the plants and the equipment they use to make the darts before neutralizing them. This is a high priority order."

"Understood, sir." Danse snapped him a crisp salute.

"Why does he want their goodwill as well?" asked Rhys later.

"Because this is someone who can formulate a compound which takes out a supermutant with one dose," Haylen said. "You really don't want someone _that_ good with poisons to have any ill will towards you."

* * *

In Diamond City, Nick Valentine, who never ate, drank or slept, since he was, after all, a second generation synth, opted to pull out a very old file and look at it again. He didn't really need to, since he was not capable of forgetting, but he liked to. It felt right somehow. The file itself went back before his time, or before his involvement with it, at any rate.

It began with a missing person report. Four days before the Big One, Doctor Theodosia Queen, PhD in Agroecology, was reported missing by her friends and colleagues. (He'd had to look up what 'agroecology' was. It turned out to be the study of how agriculture fit into the environment.)

She had had a very bad month. First her grandmother had passed away from natural causes and then her parents and her brother died in an accident on the freeway. Just the sort of thing that sometimes happened, no big drama around it, unless it was your family. Then you would be devastated, if you loved them at all.

He looked at the photograph of Doctor Queen. After two hundred and ten years, it was discolored and dog eared, but it still showed the face of a young woman who looked uncomfortably intelligent, but like she had a sense of humor about it. An unkind person would have said she was horse-faced, but Nick thought her bone structure was rather elegant. He wondered briefly about what particular flavor of humanity she was, since her skin tone was noncommittal. Eurasian, maybe?

Anyway, she had gone missing right before the bombs fell, and afterward there were bigger problems than one lost PhD.

The next file was from fifty years later. This photograph had the look of all post-war photos: it was streaky and foggy from ambient radiation, and it showed a young woman who was not at her best, since she had been killed and partially eaten by mirelurks. The medical examiner's report was less than complete. She was between the ages of eighteen to thirty, based on her wisdom teeth and her appearance, well-nourished, unusual in an era where most people were half-starved all the time, her hands were calloused and her musculature showed that she did a lot of manual labor. But her face was so similar to Theodosia Queen's that they might have been twins, if twins were born fifty years apart.

She had been wearing a Vault suit when she died, but one with a symbol rather than a number. The symbol was a seedling sprouting against the silhouette of a sun. There was no record of any Vault which used that instead of a number. No one ever came forward to identify or claim her.

The third case file came some thirty years after that. This was the first one where Nick was actually involved. A young woman was found dead in the street outside Diamond City. She had died of strangulation, but her body showed that she had been tortured and raped for weeks or months before that. He tracked her back to a brothel in the area, and learned she had been found wandering the wastes by raiders, who used her until they tired of her and sold her to the brothel keepers.

According to the other unfortunate young women kept as slaves there, she had said her name was Elizabeth, and when she came in, she had been wearing the remains of a Vault suit with a symbol of a seedling against the sun on the back, rather than a number. She had talked about her sisters, and cried a lot. No photograph this time, just an artist's rendition of her face, and she looked as much like Theodosia Queen as the one killed by mirelurks. No one ever came forward to claim or identify her, either.

A hundred years went by after that before the same face showed up again. This time the young woman was found in a supermutant's meat bag among several other bodies. No clothing of hers was ever found, but Nick would have bet money that she had been wearing a Vault suit with a symbol on the back rather than a number as well. Again, no one had ever some forward to claim or identify her.

Nick closed the file again, tapping the edge of it against his lips, thoughtfully. There were three possibilities. One, Theodosia Queen had somehow ended up in a Vault without many other people in it, and the young women were her descendants. Consanguinity had led to them looking almost exactly alike.

Second, they were synths. That one he dismissed, as the one who wound up feeding mirelurks would be a second-gen synth like himself, not flesh and blood like the newest models. The examiner could not have missed that.

Third, they were clones of Doctor Queen. Cloning was quite possible; in Vault City they used cloning to make replacement organs and limbs, and in Vault 108, some scientists had reportedly cloned some guy named 'Gary' over and over again, until there were fifty-four of them. No one knew exactly why they did it. They just did it, maybe just to see if it could be done. The early Garys were all right, but the more of them there were, the more hostile they were to everyone who _wasn't_ a Gary, until they were full-blown homicidal. After a while, there wasn't anyone left in 108 except for Garys, and the only thing they ever said was 'Gary'. As a method of reproduction, cloning was held to be a failure.

But what if the method wasn't the failure, but how clones were treated? Give them all the same name and treat them as disposable units, and they turned hostile. If they had their own names and were treated like people, maybe they'd turn out okay. Theodosia Queen was a brilliant biologist, by all accounts. She had the know-how. If she hadn't anyone to have a family with, maybe she'd come up with another way to have one.

Nick Valentine put the file away. Maybe there were other Queens out there. Maybe there had been some who he'd never heard of. He just hoped that if there were, they had better luck than those he had learned about.

* * *

A/N: Happy New Year, everyone! Keen observers will notice I made a change to when Recon Team Artemis went missing. It happened very recently, rather than several years ago.

Some of my guest reviews aren't showing up when I click on reviews, but I still get them via email. So: Yes. The Brotherhood of Steel does want Raina and her plants, but they don't yet know the extent of the resources she has at her disposal. The Institute isn't aware yet, but they will be before too much longer. Raina will come into conflict with them both, and I'm not telling any more than that because spoilers. Her sense of ethics is too opposite both of theirs to coexist.

Thank you, Bearybeary and my other Guest! Thank you, jukehero461, br2nd66, and Amethiste!


	8. Hash Browns

Hash browns…Preston savored the forkful of food. Crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, with bits of onion mixed in for flavor. When the only way you'd ever had potatoes in your life was the occasional box of Instamash, you had no idea how good they really were.

November had passed and December had come to the Commonwealth. Now Sanctuary, which by common agreement included Raina's homestead, looked more or less like the rest of the Commonwealth: grey and brown. It never got that cold in the winter, but most nights it did drop below freezing and occasionally they got some snow. It was a time to rest up from all the harvesting.

He wasn't the restful sort. It came as a welcome relief when after breakfast, a settler came by to ask for help. "It's raiders," the man from Tenpines said. "They're holed up in the old Corvega Assembly plant. Every time they get low on food, they come by and take near everything we've managed to grow. Now it's winter and…" He spread his hands. "We won't have anything to get us through to spring, the way they prey on us. There's at least two dozen of them there, probably more."

"I hear you," Preston said. "The Minutemen will help."

"That's good," the man relaxed. "There's only me and my sister at Tenpines, and we barely get by."

Preston had found a key labeled 'Corvega Storage Key' on one of the raiders on the day Raina rescued them in Concord, and he'd been curious as to what was stored there. Not curious enough to go there without another reason, but now that he had one, why not go find out. He was a little daunted when he heard the estimated number of raiders: at least two dozen.

Yet he had pledged himself to help. Even though he was the last Minuteman standing. He went in his house and got his gear. When he returned, he found the settler hanging around the rabbit pens, goggling at the young ones frisking around on the grass.

The man started when he realized Preston was there. "Sorry, I just—What _are_ those?"

"Rabbits." He smiled at the look on the settler's face.

" _Rabbits_? Where did you get them? Why do you keep them?"

"We had the good fortune to meet up with someone who breeds them. Chickens, too," Preston pointed to the coops. "Now we've got good eggs you don't have to risk your life to get, lean, safe meat, manure to spread on the fields, fur to make yarn and blankets from, feathers to stuff pillows. If you're interested, go talk to Mama Murphy. She lives there." Preston pointed out the house. "She'll tell you what you need and how to care for them. We'll fix you up with enough to start breeding your own."

"You will? That's—what do they cost?"

"Nothing but a promise that you'll be as generous in the future when someone else needs your help. When everybody has enough to eat, we'll all be richer for it."

"That's—that's wonderful! Thanks, friend!" The man made as if to dash to Mama's place.

"Just—uh, if she asks for any chems you might have on you, don't give them to the lady," Preston lowered his voice. "She has…herbal cigarettes, and that's about as strong a chem as she ought to have, at her age." Raina grew ganja and was willing to share small amounts, which kept Mama happy and mellow. That was enough. Maybe her visions weren't as intense as when she was on other chems, but he didn't have to worry about her ODing.

"Oh. Okay."

"Come spring, come back and we'll see about setting you up with seeds for new crops, too." Preston called after him.

Two dozen raiders…

He had no back up, no power armor, and there were no other Minutemen to call on.

At least it wasn't raining.

As he made to cross the bridge, he saw Raina about to cross as well, coming from her place, King loping by her side. She'd been away for a while, and though Jonny-say-Quoi could look after almost everything on his own, the one thing he couldn't do was milk the cow. She didn't like cold metal hands on her teats, and his manipulators weren't really designed for that anyway. So she'd brought her cow and calf to board the animals with them, which was the least they could do. Now she was back, which was good, as he'd worried, even though she had her dog with her.

He waved, and she returned it. They met in the middle of the bridge. "Preston!" she greeted him. "Just the man I wanted to talk to."

"Welcome back," he replied. "Sorry, can't stop to talk."

"Oh. Well, I needn't get the cow right _now_. She can wait. Mind if I join you for a ways?"

"No, I don't mind," he replied. She reversed direction, keeping pace with him at a couple yard's distance.

"Are you…all right?" she asked, peering at his face. "I know I am not very good at reading people yet. I never had to before I came Topside. You seem upset. Did something happen while I was away?"

"Nothing. What did you want to talk about?"

"I've got all the parts on Sturges' list. You know, stuff to build a generator and a radio transmitter to draw more settlers to Sanctuary," she told him. "but I was wondering if you knew of some place where they still print books, or at least booklets."

"Books? Why?"

"If I have learned anything over the last month and a half, it's that I can't simply hand over plants or animals with a few simple instructions on how to grow or care for them and what to do with them. People need to hear things more than once, and since there will come a time where I can't be everywhere, I thought that written instructions would be the answer. Illustrated, if possible," She looked up at him.

He smiled. "The only place I know of is in Diamond City. They have a newspaper there, Publick Occurrences, I think it's called. I'm willing to bet that if you have the caps, they'd be willing. Anyhow, I may have created a new chicken and rabbit breeder today…." Preston explained about the settler with the raider problem.

"I'm glad you're getting the word out about the animals, but I thought something was weighing on your mind," Raina said when he was done. "So you're going out alone after these raiders? Stuff that. I'm your back up, me and King."

"That's very kind of you," he said, touched.

"Not at all. I have a new batch of darts to try out. A new formula, one that isn't so unforgiving," she replied.

"What was wrong with the old one? It seemed to work fine to me."

"Yes, but what if I'd shot one of you by accident? You would have been as dead as that deathclaw. There's an antidote for this formula, and if you're hunting radstag, for example, you could even eat the meat afterward. Here, let me drop off the components for the generator and the radio beacon, and then we can make some real speed. How I wish horses had survived—walking takes forever. Plus, we could use the hair and manure."

He chuckled. "That's you all over. Always thinking of something."

"Too true! Also, I was thinking…It probably wouldn't be a good idea to take a load of seeds and crates of animals to Diamond City on Market Day to give out, would it? Not if I'm the only person who has them. Doing as you did today, distributing things through the population one settlement at a time, through the structure of the Minutemen, that would be better. If they're willing to support the Minutemen, they're showing enlightened self-interest, enough to…" She trailed off.

"To what?" he asked.

"Not jeopardize the source by delving too hard into where these things come from."

"Why? Is this something to do with where you've been these last two weeks?" he seized on that. "Where you were working on a new formula…You aren't actually from the Institute, are you?"

"The what?" The puzzlement in her voice was convincing.

"The Institute…" He explained about the shadowy and contemptuous organization which was dug deep into the Commonwealth like live blowfly larvae hatching in an open wound, about the synths, the kidnappings, the informants who come and go among the ordinary citizens.

"That's horrible. No, I'm not. I would never… Do they clone people there?"

He wondered at the sudden question. "Uh—I wouldn't know. Probably not. They like making synths out of them instead."

"The technology must be somewhat similar," she mused. "No. I am not part of the Institute. I can't imagine being that selfish and shortsighted."

"I didn't really think you could be. Just a knee jerk reaction on my part. They're the…the boogeyman, you see. No, everything you've done is the opposite of what they'd do. But…where were you?"

"Back in my old Vault, working. Keeping it going. It was my home and before me, my family's home for generations. If things don't work out Topside, I may wind up going back there." Raina looked very somber for a moment.

"Okay, I can see that. And that's where you keep these poisonous plants, so they don't get mixed up with regular plants?"

"You're right!" She flashed him a sudden smile. "Otherwise, the livestock could get into them."

* * *

They continued on companionably in the direction of the Corvega plant, which was indeed swarming with raiders. Afterward, they split up the loot, Preston marked the way to Diamond City on her map, and Raina set off. Once she was far enough down the road, she stopped to look back at him. She liked him. In fact, she liked him very much. Objectively speaking, she had no idea if he was good-looking or not—she chalked that up to being a clone and never seeing another face until she went Topside—but she liked his face and his way of speaking. She liked his willingness to work and the way he looked after Mama Murphy. He agreed with her when it came to believing that people should help each other. She could even imagine he would be a good and caring father.

However, she could not imagine being the mother of those children. She liked him, but no more than that. Even when she recalled how he smiled when he held a baby chicken in his hand, petting it with one finger, she could not summon up a stronger feeling about him. Parting with him just then had not made her sad in the least, and though she hoped he made it back to Sanctuary alive and well, she wasn't especially anxious about his welfare. She didn't feel her heart racing when he was near, her breathing did not quicken, and there was no 'liquidity in her loins', a phrase she had read and snorted in laughter about when she was twelve or thirteen.

Whatever it was you were supposed to feel when you were attracted to someone, she didn't feel that way about Preston. Nor did she feel anything for Sturges, either. That was both sad and annoying, because it would have been nice to find someone straight off and not have to do a lot of searching.

Maybe it was something that would happen later, once she knew them better.

Or maybe it wasn't something that would ever happen, because being raised in isolation meant that some part of her had failed to develop when it should. She could feel love, she knew that, because she had loved her sisters and she loved King, and even Jonny-say-Quoi, but not in any romantic or sexual way.

There were also other things which set her apart from most people. For example, nobody else seemed to have functioning ancestral memories. They had to learn almost everything on their own, from reading and writing on up. Or so she gathered.

Being a clone on your own was terrible. Even when you were among friendly people, the desolation did not fade.

Raina squinted after his receding figure in the distance, then turned and went on to Diamond City. The mysteries of love, fulfilling one's genetic imperative, and being a singleton clone would have to wait. Picking her way through the ruins of Boston took some time, and she camped in an abandoned building overnight, King curled up beside her. He helped with the loneliness; the simple, unconditional love he had for her was like sunshine on a flower.

In the morning there were raiders and supermutants to contend with before she reached the gates. Secretly, Raina had been hoping 'Diamond City' would be like the Emerald City from the OZ books. It was not. It had been a baseball stadium before the war, and while it might be the best place to live now, it was only better by comparison, from the look of it.

A very angry and noisy woman about her own age was trying to get in the gates, which were resolutely closed. When Raina approached, she left off yelling at the guard behind the metal panels, glanced at the newcomer and did a double take. "Ah—oh, what was the name? Um, your name wouldn't happen to be Isadora Queen, or maybe Theodora Queen, something like that?"

"No, I'm Raina Queen. But my great-great grandmother, who was alive when the War happened, was Theodosia Queen. How do you know her name?"

"A friend of mine, Nick Valentine's his name, has an old, old file on her—and on three other women who were dead ringers for her. Were they your relatives?" The woman turned to face her fully. She had very regular features, which probably meant she was attractive.

"Yes, they must have been! Several of my, ah, aunts and cousins left our Vault over the years, and none ever came back. Who is this Valentine? Can I meet him?" A rush of emotion swept over her, so intense she could hardly tell what it was.

"Sure! I'll be glad to introduce you. The name's Piper Wright. I'm the reporter, editor and publisher of Diamond City's one and only newspaper, Publick Occurrences." Piper stuck out a hand for Raina to shake. "This will make a great story. A mystery that stretches back over two hundred years, finally cleared up! And you come from a Vault, too?"

"You run the printing press? But you're why I'm here! I want to have some booklets printed. I won't need them until spring—well, one of them I could use sooner, but I don't know what your rates might be or how long it would take, so I came to find out now." Raina smiled. "What luck!"

"What, you have a job for me? A paying job? I mean, what do you want printed up, and how big a run?" Piper Wright looked…a lot like Preston and the others had looked when they arrived for breakfast the first day. Like someone had given her a present and she wasn't sure that they weren't going to snatch it back the next moment.

"One booklet on…agricultural methods and another on animal care. A couple hundred of each for a first run. I can provide the paper if you tell me what size and kind you need. Can you do illustrations?" Raina asked, "If you can, I have some colored inks."

"Maybe, if they were simple. Heck, if you pay for it, my sister and I will hand-color them individually. Do you have the manuscripts with you? Hey, Danny open the damn gate already! You're interfering with my livelihood now!"

* * *

A/N: And with this chapter, this fic now passes the Bechdel test! If you don't already know, the Bechdel Test refers to a comic by Alison Bechdel. To pass, a work of fiction (movie, TV, book, comic book, whatever) has to have:

At least two women in it with roles important enough to warrant actual names, (not just Prostitute # 1 or Blonde Waitress).

These women have to talk to each other.

Their conversation must be about something other than a man.

Why is this important? Think of all the works that _don't_ pass it. The Bechdel test doesn't mean a work is feminist, but it does mean a work acknowledges that women exist as people outside of their relationships with men. That _is_ important. We need more works that pass the Bechdel Test, and I'm upholding that here in fic-dom.

Anyway, FF dot net seems to have fixed the review problem. I am amazed at the responses and degree to which people are into this! Thank you so much! This chapter is dedicated to the anonymous Guest Reviewer who wanted to be sure potatoes are among the crops reintroduced to the Commonwealth.


	9. (Valentine) Hearts and (Sun) Flowers

Piper glanced at the newcomer as they entered the city, seeing where the woman's eyes went and where they lingered. She hadn't memorized Nick's file on Theodosia Queen and her look-alikes, but she remembered certain details. Callused hands—Piper had felt them when they shook hands. Well-nourished where most people were rail thin, but more muscular than fat—she was that too.

"So how long have you been out of your Vault?" Piper began by asking.

"Since May, so about seven months ago. I live on the outskirts of Sanctuary, which is northwest of Concord," Raina Queen replied.

"What are your impressions of the world Topside?"

"It's big, it's often noisy, always dirty, and practically everything and everyone is trying to kill me. Big, noisy and dirty are not problems. Trying to kill me is another matter."

Piper stifled a laugh, but then she noticed the syringer hanging off the other woman's shoulder, and she remembered the stories about bodies turning up without bullet holes or stab wounds in them, just syringer darts, and about the bloody froth around the eyes and ears of those bodies, and gouts of blood around the mouths. Those stories had been going around for…about six months now. Maybe seven. The one and only reporter for the one and only newspaper in the Commonwealth was headstrong and even foolhardy at times, but she wasn't stupid.

"So why did you decide to leave your Vault?" she pressed on.

"My sister Vicky hit her head and died. She and I were the last ones left, and we were getting low on fusion cores, so instead of waiting around for the power to fail, I thought I'd come up and have a look around. We—," Queen's voice faltered. "We had an elder sister, Joanna, who left the Vault when I was quite small. She was one of those who never came back. Learning what happened to her—it would mean a great deal to me. Did any of those women appear about twenty years ago?"

"Um—." Piper thought for a moment. "No. I think the last was about forty years ago, maybe? You don't have to rely on my memory. Nick has all the details. Let's talk about your booklets first, then we'll go see him. Okay?"

"Fine with me," Raina answered.

They had reached the shack which was both the office of Publick Occurrences and the home of Piper Wright and her sister Nat. Nat was taking a Nuka-Cola break when they came up on them.

"Hey, Piper!" The girl bounded to her feet. "Who's this? New in town? First issue's on us!" She practically threw a paper at Raina.

"Easy there, kiddo!" Piper said. "This is Raina. She wants us to print up some booklets for us, so she and I are going to talk details. Keep up the good work!"

"Booklets? You mean, like paid work?" Nat asked, looking surprised.

"Yes," Raina smiled at her.

"Whoa!" Then Nat noticed the dog. "Oh, you have a dog! Is he friendly?"

"Yes. His name is King and he loves to chase balls and sticks. Shall I leave him with you while your sister and I talk?" Raina offered.

"Thanks!" Nat's face lit up.

Once inside the office, Piper offered her guest a chair and pulled up one herself. They could hear King and Nat playing together outside, his happy barks and her joyous laughter. Piper was glad to hear her sister laugh like that, but she put that aside for the moment. "Okay, let's talk turkey. Have you got a manuscript or an example of the illustrations you want?"

"Yes. Not a complete manuscript, but enough to give you an idea of what it's like, and a few pages of layout with illustrations, to show how I want them to look," the woman replied. She took a sheaf of papers from her satchel and handed them over to Piper.

The first few pages were the samples with illustrations, some in color and some in black and white. The first one had a big yellow flower with a dark brown center on it, and the text below it read:

 **Sunflower (** _ **Helianthus annuus**_ **)**

 **This hardy annual is extremely easy to grow, perhaps the easiest of all crops, as long as you remember they are called sunflowers for a reason. They need to be planted in full sun. That is the most important consideration. They aren't fussy about soil, and you can plant a lot of them very close together. As long as the earth is not actually soggy, they will do well, but naturally they will do better in better soil.**

 **There are two major varieties: the dry, which bear large seeds in white and black striped hulls, and the oily sort, which bear smaller seeds in pure black hulls. The drier variety can be hulled easily when fully dry by splitting the hull apart with a fingernail, and the seed can be eaten raw, ground up and added to flour, roasted and salted as a snack, sprinkled on salads or mixed into bread dough. They are tasty and nutritious, rich in protein, vitamins and minerals, and store well once dry. They also are better than corn as animal feed.**

 **The oily sunflower seed is even more valuable as a source of edible oil. An acre's worth of sunflower seeds can yield as much as 714 lbs. of oil, or 102 gallons, as opposed to corn, which yields 129 lbs. of oil per acre, or 18 gallons. They are not as easily hulled, however. Pressing them in their shells is more efficient when making oil. After being pressed for oil, the remaining mash can be used to supplement animal feed. Chickens love sunflower seeds and they can form a valuable supplement to rabbit feed as well, especially in the winter. Use as a** ** _supplement_** **to feed and** **not** **a substitute.**

 **If you plan to save your own seed for planting every year, it would be best to choose either one kind or the other and specialize, as they are cross fertile, and the resulting seeds next year are likely to be neither as dry and tasty as the one nor oily enough to press well like the other.**

 **Plant directly in the earth in spring after the last frost, in average to rich soil with good drainage where they will get full sun. You will need three or four pounds of seed to plant an acre. Both varieties can grow as tall as 20 feet high, and their single flowers can measure as much as two feet across. These cheerful flowers turn to face the sun throughout the course of the day. This is entirely normal, so do not be alarmed. A field in full bloom is magnificent to see. Their petals are usually yellow but can be any warm-toned color from white to a very dark red-brown, and their centers can be just as varied.**

 **Harvest in fall once the seedheads release their seeds easily when prodded with a thumb.**

There was more about how to press the seeds for oil and refine the oil after pressing, but Piper didn't bother to read any further. "This is…What _is_ this? Why are you writing about something that's extinct? Who do you think is going to _want_ to read about something they can never grow? Oh…"

Raina had brought out a drawstring bag and undone the knot at the neck, spilling out a quantity of small black seeds. "I harvested these a month ago from my steading in Sanctuary," she explained. "This is about a pound of seed, one big seedhead's worth. I've a lot more stored at home."

"But where did you get them?" Piper stared at the seeds.

"From the Vault. It's an Envirovault, meant to replicate an entire ecosystem. We—my family—have kept it going since, and even before the War."

Piper's brow creased. "An Envirovault? I thought none of them survived. Too fragile, or too expensive, or hard to maintain, or something. They were this granola-eating treehugger thing…"

Raina frowned in thought, her brows furrowing together. "I don't know about any others. Ours survived."

The reporter skimmed through more of the pages, the ones which were just manuscript without illustrations. **Stinging Nettle (** _ **Urtica diocia**_ **): It is hard to overstate how valuable this plant is, as a vegetable, after it has been cooked to remove the spines, as animal fodder, as a tea, as enrichment for the soil, even as a medication to increase milk… Raspberry (** _ **Rubus idaeus**_ **), This fruit grows on thorny canes…Strawberry (** _ **Fragaria ananassa**_ **or** _ **Fragaria vesca**_ **)…Flax (** _ **Linum usitatissimum)…**_

Each had detailed descriptions and instructions. A few even had recipes.

"This is not simply the story of the year or even the story of the century," Piper looked at her guest. "This is… I can't even find the words. I've got to start _writing_ —."

"I'm sorry," Raina Queen said, firmly. "Someday, you can publish everything for the entire world to read, or as much of the world as can be reached. For the next few years, you'll have to keep this under wraps."

"Why? This is important!"

"I know. That's why you can't tell everyone. A friend of mine told me all about the Institute yesterday, everything he knew about it. It suits them to keep the Commonwealth poor and ignorant, grubbing for what little food they have. They have tech, but they hoard it. They create synths to replace people rather than helping them survive, don't they?" Raina raised an eyebrow.

"Yes…"

"What if they found out that dozens of food crops were returning, _high yield_ food crops which mean that people can do things besides just barely get by? What if they found out who was responsible?"

"They'd hunt those people down, take everything for themselves, and make synths of them to send home and ruin their reputations while they…got rid of the real ones." Piper realized.

Raina nodded. "I imagine so. But if every settler has a hutch full of rabbits, a flock of chickens, and a couple dozen different crops planted before they even notice—."

"They won't be able to take all of it from everyone, once it's everywhere." Piper concluded. "So the booklets are for the ordinary settlers who'll be growing things?"

"Yes. Now, let's talk caps. I'd like the booklet on animal care printed first. The agriculture booklet can wait until spring."

A half hour later, they had a deal hammered out. The price would be three caps per booklet, two hundred of the planting guide and two hundred of the animal care guide. Raina would pay Piper two hundred caps now, another four hundred when she delivered the finished manuscripts, and the balance once the booklets were printed. In return, Piper promised complete confidentiality, and that she would have them ready a month after she received the full manuscripts. Any reprints would be at two caps per booklet, unless there were major revisions. It was a substantial addition to the Wright sisters' income.

As they were finishing up, Piper remembered the syringer. "Raina, are _you_ the one who's going around with deadly poison darts? Is that something else from your Vault?"

"Yes," Queen replied. "But keep that under your hat, too."

Shouting in the street brought them out to witness a terrible scene. Two men were yelling at each other, one insisting the other was a synth and not his brother, while the putative synth was arguing back, swearing up and down that he was human. Several guards were backing up the one making the accusation, and it ended with the shooting death of the accused. Raina wondered if there was any of telling someone was a synth before it led to an autopsy, and tucked it away in a corner of her mind with the other things she would work on when she got a spare moment.

"I've got to cover this!' Piper's eyes gleamed. "Oh—you can go to Nick's on your own. Head to the weapon dealer's, he's called Arturo, then take a left and follow the heart signs. You can't miss it. Tell him you're a friend of mine."

"All right," Raina agreed. She could tell that at some point, Theodosia Queen had been in that very stadium, because her memories of it lay over the present like a transparency. Mama Murphy had had to explain to her, gently and in private, that most people had only their own memories to draw on. Until then, she had not realized it was not normal. Or, rather, not normal for those who were conceived in the usual way, with all their chromosomes split and mixed up every which way. For her it was perfectly normal.

She made her way through the market, stopping here and there to browse. To Raina's surprise, the vendors had much the same merchandise as Carla, only more of it. She had expected to find better things in the city. One of the merchants, a woman named Myrna, was particularly paranoid about synths. Given what had just happened, was she overreacting? King was happy to trot along beside her though, and even happier when she bought him a meaty marrow bone.

The butcher's eyes bulged when she immediately gave King the bone, and the man sputtered out something like, "You're wasting it on the dog?"

"This dog is the reason I'm still alive," Raina told the man. "He saved my life three times this morning alone. Come on, King!"

Once she had made the round of the shops, her initial impression was confirmed. Nothing was new except the fresh produce and meat; everything else was salvage from two hundred years ago. Rubbish, in other words.

Something had to be done. Someone ought to start something new. For example, was there no clay left in the world, that people had to make do with cracked, chipped dishes and mended coffee mugs? Coming up with some kind of glaze couldn't be that difficult. Wasn't there a book on pottery making back in her Vault somewhere? Then there was soap. It was easy enough to make: fats or oils combined with potash. She and her sisters made a batch once every year or so. All the soap she'd found Topside was two hundred years old.

She shelved those ideas for later. As she had told Piper, a large part of the problem was that the current food crops were low-yield and poor quality. Too many people had to spend their entire lives farming at barely subsistence level. First things first: people had to eat. More food and better food would make a huge difference in their quality of life. Then it would be time to look into possible cottage industries.

As Piper had said, there were signs pointing the way to Nick Valentine's. They made her smile, because they were both clever and creative. They led her to a shack in a back alley, although it was really more like a back corridor. There she knocked on the door and waited until a woman invited her in.

"If you're looking for—Oh!" the young woman began and then broke off, staring at Raina as if at…well, as if at a ghost.

"Hello, my name is Queen," Raina said and smiled as warm and friendly a smile as she could..

"Uh, yeah. I kind of guessed that," the girl said, and sat down in a chair like she really needed the support. "Nick always said…he said you—or one of you, I mean, someone who _looked_ like you, would turn up again. He just hoped it would be alive that time. Are you… actually Theodosia?"

"No, I'm Raina Queen. Theodosia was my however-many-great-great grandmother," she told the young woman. "She survived the war in our Vault, but we were cut off. Several of my relatives left over the years to try and make contact with others. None of them ever returned. We've always wanted to know what became of them."

"I understand," said the young woman. "Oh, I never introduced myself. I'm Ellie Perkins. I'm Nick's assistant, but he's not here."

"When will he be back?" Raina asked.

"That's just it," Ellie nearly moaned. "I don't know. He's missing, and I'm afraid something has happened to him. I do know where he was going." She went on to explain about the missing daughter, the gangster, and Vault 114. "I'd go myself, because Nick is a really great guy, the best boss I've ever had, but I'm not brave enough. Someone like you, though…"

Raina nodded. "Not nearly enough people have tried to kill me yet today. I've come to expect it. I'll do my best."

"Thank you!" Elllie gasped.

A/N: All the details about sunflowers are accurate, but there's a lot greater variety than Raina wrote down. She can't offer all of them at once, so she's picking two and going with it. Same thing with other fruits and vegetables. Ever look through a big garden catalog? There are literally _dozens_ of different varieties of things like potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and onions. Some are good for frying, some for baking, some for salads, others for sauces. The Repository has all of them and more.

Guestman, you hit the nail on the head. Johnny Appleseed was one of my inspirations for Raina, and the reason why her Mr. Handy is called Jonny.


	10. Boredom is a Terrible Thing

Nick Valentine was bored, which is a terrible problem when you don't have any of the usual distractions sentient beings have, such as hunger, thirst, fatigue, pain, and the need to go to the bathroom. Having those issues, thinking about them, and resolving them takes up quite a lot of the attention span and keeps people busy most of the time, especially in a post-apocalyptic world where survival is a day to day or an hour to hour business. Nor had he any of the distractions people invent for themselves, like a good book or chems. After two weeks locked up like that, even baiting Dino was getting old…

…Until he saw someone enter the Vault from the other end, moving quickly and silently through the area from one spot of concealment to another, hardly more than a shadow. Someone was coming to his rescue? Who owed him that kind of favor? Maybe Ellie had arranged something, or maybe it was unrelated to him entirely.

Whatever the reason, he wasn't about to let the opportunity slide. He raised his voice, "Go ahead, Meathead. It'll give Skinny Malone more time to think about how he's gonna bump you off."

"Don't give me that crap, Valentine. You know nothin'. You got nothin'," Dino retorted.

"Really? I saw him writing your name down in that black book of his. 'Lousy cheating cark-shark', I think were his exact words. Then he struck the name across three times." Anyone who spent any time with Skinny knew that he wrote down the names of people who got on his bad side, pulling it out of his breast pocket, wetting the tip of his pencil on his tongue, and then scrawling the name with powerful strokes. When it came to Skinny nearly all his sides were bad. Inside, outside, upside, downside. Three strikes, and like in baseball, you're out. Nick was taking a shot in the dark as to how Dino might have transgressed, but it didn't it really matter. Skinny was the paranoid type and if he even suspected someone was cheating…

"Three strikes? In the black book? But I never—Oh, no, I've got to smooth this over, fast!" He made as if to run, but then the shadowy figure clocked him a good one with…a shovel? Interesting choice of blunt instrument, but it worked. Dino crumpled to the ground.

"Hey, you! I don't know who you are, but…" Then he saw his rescuer's face. A woman. Young, with dark hair that tumbled around her shoulders. Hazel green eyes, indeterminate skin tone, a wide and generous mouth, and an intelligent expression. He knew that face very well. It was the face of Theodosia Queen, and of Elizabeth Queen, and of two other unnamed women. " _You_!" he sputtered. "How—never mind, we've got about three minutes before they realize muscles-for-brains ain't coming back. Get this door open!"

She nodded and disappeared for a moment. Then he heard the hiss and clank of the maglocks releasing, and a moment later she dashed into the room, a German Shepard dog at her heels.

"Gotta love the irony of the reverse damsel-in-distress situation. Ms. Queen, I presume? Not Ellery, by any chance?" He lost no time, but bolted out the door, followed by the young woman and her dog.

"No, it's Raina, but good one!" Ellery Queen was the name of a fictional private detective from the 20th century, and since the War and the destruction of practically all books, he had been completely forgotten. That she had immediately known who he was talking about was impressive.

"Raina? 'Reign a Queen'? Why on earth would anyone saddle you with that moniker?" he threw behind him as they went.

"I don't think they considered that when I was named. You are the first person who ever pointed that out, in truth. Ah—are you a synth?" she asked. She sounded curious rather than judgmental.

"Yeah. The skin and the metal bits really give it away, don't they? Thank you for not freaking out at the sight of them, by the way. Thanks for the rescue, too. I've been cooped up in here for weeks. Turns out the runaway daughter I came here to find wasn't kidnapped. She's Skinny Malone's new dame, and she's got a mean streak. Since you didn't ask how I knew your last name, I'm thinking Ellie pointed you my way?"

"Yes. Piper told me you had a file on my…on my family, and—." Raina said. He did not miss the little hesitation and correction she made. Yeah, she was hiding something.

He suddenly stopped in his tracks, threw his arm in front of her to brake her. "Another locked door. Shouldn't be too hard. I smell trouble up ahead. Skinny Malone and the rest of his boys are waiting for us. Don't let the name fool you, it's, uh, ironic. He's dangerous." Nick fiddled with the lock for a moment, felt the tumblers give.

"What about your dog? Is he going to get in the way?" he glanced at the animal, who was carrying around a large bone with a few shreds of meat still clinging to it.

"He knows how not to get shot, or he would've been dead a thousand times over the last seven months. King's the best. Aren't you, boy?" Raina scratched around the Shepard's ears, and he grinned, dog fashion, around his bone.

Well, the dog did have serious armor on him, like the K-9 corps the real Nick Valentine remembered from his days as a cop. "A king and a queen both come to rescue me. Your Majesties are too kind. Okay, let's do this. Be ready for anything on the other side of this door." He pulled his gun, she pulled her…syringer? Well, if it worked for her, who was he to judge?

The 200+ year old door groaned as the hydraulics and mags did their work. On the other side were Skinny, his gal Darla, and a few chumps who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Malone shook his head. "Nicky, whatta ya doin'? Ya come into my house, shoot up my guys—do you have any idea how much this is gonna set me back?"

Valentine replied, "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for your two-timing dame, Skinny. You ought to tell her to write home more often."

Darla, who already had lines around her mouth like she was sucking a lemon, despite being relatively young, put on a syrupy coo, "Aww, whassa matter? Is the great Nick Valentine sore about getting beat up by a girl? Skinny, I tole ya, ya shooda iced him weeks ago, but noooo, you had to go get sentimental about the old days. Now look! He prolly brought her in here to bump us all off!" She gesticulated with a baseball bat she was holding.

"I'm only here because Mr. Valentine may know what happened to my sister," Raina said, sounding a little bewildered. "If he wasn't being held prisoner, I wouldn't have had any reason to come here and if your men weren't inclined to shoot first and ask questions afterward, I wouldn't have had to kill them. I don't go out of my way to kill people. I never killed anyone who wasn't trying to kill me first."

One of his thugs was looking at the syringer in Raina's hands and back at her. He stepped forward to whisper something in Malone's ear. The big man suddenly looked a lot less sure of himself.

"Hey, those darts in that thing you got there. Are they—." He paused and wetted his lips. "Are they the ones that make you choke on your own blood with one dose?"

"These darts?" She lifted the syringer. "No. I use those for supermutants, ghouls and deathclaws. One dose of this causes paralysis within five paces, but it doesn't actually kill you for half an hour to forty-five minutes, when the paralysis gets to the heart and lungs. If you had someone willing to perform CPR on you continuously for a couple of hours, you would survive. That's when you learn who your real friends are. Now, as for why Mr. Valentine was here: Miss, are you eighteen?"

"What? What does that have to do with anything?" Darla lowered the baseball bat a few centimeters. "Yeah, I am, if you want to know. Not that _you'll_ ever see eighteen again!"

Nick concealed a smile. Darla would never see eighteen again herself. If anything she was nearer to thirty-six than to eighteen.

"And you are not married? It was your father who hired Mr. Valentine to find you?"

"My father ain't got any right to tell me what to do," the dame shrilled. "Nobody does!"

"Is your family going to lock you in the attic or the basement if you go back?" Raina persisted.

"Hah! Like they'd dare!"

"Hey, why is this broad doing so much talking?" Skinny wondered aloud to Valentine.

"Beats me. I only met her ten minutes ago," Nick replied. "But I have an idea where this conversation is going, and I gotta say, I like the destination."

"Then why all of this? Go home, tell your family you are old enough to do as you please and you want to be with Mr. Malone. Then leave and come back to him. _None_ of this was necessary," Raina pointed out.

Darla's jaw dropped open. "That's—Skinny, why do I gotta put up with this mouthy broad? Are you gonna let her make out like I'm, I'm _stupid_ or something?"

"Hey, if the shoes fit," Nick was now enjoying himself a great deal, because Skinny was looking at Darla less like she was Love's Young Dream and more like she was a millstone around his neck. "In fact, if you would just state, for the record, and by record, I mean the recording device I have built into my CPU, that you're with Skinny here of your own free will and can leave any time you want, I believe it'll be enough to satisfy your family, if not enough for me to get paid for this. Actually, what you said already is probably plenty."

"Unless, of course, she was playing both sides against each other—making out to her family that she was in the clutches of a ruthless gangster and to him that they would never let them be together," Raina Queen speculated.

Now Skinny was looking stormy. "Darla. Say out loud whatever you have to say, or I'll give ya your walkin' papers right now. Your choice."

Her expression sourer than ever, Darla made her statement for the record.

Nick chuckled. "Skinny, I think we're done here. If your girl'd been honest with her folks in the first place, I never would have entered the picture. If I were you, I'd rethink my choice of dames. That one is the wrong kind of trouble."

"I think I'm beginnin' to see that. Yeah, Nick. You can go—for old time's sake. But I'm giving ya to the count of ten to do it. One…"

"This way—," he told Raina. She and the dog followed him, and they made for the exit out through the Park Street Station. They emerged into the pitch blackness of the post-apocalyptic cloudless night.

"Hmm," he said, looking left and right to orient himself. "We can go to Diamond City and spend half the night getting there through some very dicey turf, or we can spend the night in Goodneighbor and set out in the morning while the various factions are still sleeping it off. I don't have to sleep or eat and I don't get tired, but you do. At least I'm assuming you do."

"I do and I got little enough rest last night. King and I hid in an abandoned building and waited for day. If you say Goodneighbor is the better choice, I trust your judgement." Raina said.

"It's not ideal, but it'll do. People still kill each other in the street there, but it tends to be personal rather than murder just for the sake of murder. This way," he pointed, then gentled his voice and expression. "Now, you asked me a question before, and you did it without judging me or condemning me out of hand. I appreciate that. Now I have one for you, and I'm asking in the same spirit. You are the fifth woman to show up over the last two hundred and ten years with the same face and general build. Are you a clone of Theodosia Queen?"

She paused for a moment. "Yes," she replied. "through her daughters Margaret, Constancia, Melisande, Catherine and Ulrike."

"How does that work?" he asked.

"She cloned Margaret, who donated cells for Constancia, who in turn gave her cells for Melisande, and so on," Raina told him.

"That's interesting," he said. "Is there a reason for that?"

"Fresh, living cells are easier to work with than frozen ones," she said, but something about her voice said there was more to it. He chose not to pry at that moment. "I was told it would be better not to volunteer that information."

"That's good advice. People tend to distrust…well, that's the whole point. People tend to distrust. Now, the file on your mother and your…aunts? Cousins? Mothers, plural? What do you call them?"

"We always called each other sisters, no matter how great the age difference," Raina replied. "I'm the sixteenth clone. The last, too, unless I can get enough materials to create others."

"Sixteen of you? Damn. Well, I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but…three of them that I know of died deaths I wouldn't wish on anyone," Nick pulled out a cigarette and lit it, avoiding looking at her face. (He needed very little light to see by. His eyes were sources of light.) The cigarette did nothing but act as a prop, as smoking for him was a mannerism, a hold out from the original Nick Valentine. However, he knew it made him more human to those around him.

"How and who?" Her eyes were dark pools in her face.

"I only know the name of one of them, but I can tell you when and how the others turned up." He did not go into all the details, because already he could see her in the place of each of the young women.

"The first must have been Margaret, and the third one, Matilda," she said when he was done. "We knew they must have died out there, or else they would have come back. Those are the only ones you know about? Seven of them left us."

"That's all," he replied. "Another question. Why did your vault have a symbol rather than a number?"

"It was an EnviroVault," Raina told him.

"Never heard of them. What are they like?"

"They were intended to replicate environments on a small scale. Piper told me they were for tree-hugging granola eaters," she replied.

"A replica of an entire environment? Sounds like a tall order."

"No large animals were included," she said. "Plants and insects, mostly. You can't have plants without pollinators."

"Of course not. And Theodosia was an agroecologist. So you have, or had, your own little slice of unspoiled paradise down underground. Is it still in working order?" Nick cocked his head and looked at her closely. He was beginning to get an idea of exactly what was in that vault, and it was more valuable than Fort Knox in its heyday. Gold was pretty and it made for superior contacts in electrical devices, but you couldn't eat it, drink it, or keep warm with it.

"Yes, but we're... _I'm_ running out of fusion cores. Also, it's too quiet there without my sisters."

He nodded. "I get that. You have any more questions for me before we get to Goodneighbor? It's not such a good idea to talk about certain matters there. Like Diamond City, they're not too fond of synths."

"None that I can think of right now. I'm too tired to think straight."

* * *

A/N: Nick is a savvy fellow. Next chapter, Goodneighbor! Raina gets to meet the mayor and makes a few friends. Maybe an enemy or two as well.

Guestman: Your realistic vault 69 reminds me of a manga called Ooku, about an alternative history where a terrible plague kills most of the male population of Japan. All roles in society, from the humblest to the shogun, are taken over by women. It was very thought provoking for me. Jonny's name is a play on Je ne se quoi, but the connection will become clear later. Heh, if Raina's not careful, she'll end up owning the commonwealth! However, some of her ideas will not pan out and others will outright fail. Got to keep it realistic...

Thanks to all those who read, and double thanks for those who favorite and follow!


	11. Goodneighbor

"And here we are, Goodneighbor. Named after an, um, exotic dancer in the days of yore, originally known as Scollay Square. Not a nice area if you plan to settle down and raise a family, but it has a hotel with hot and cold running water. It's a place without laws. That doesn't mean it doesn't have certain unwritten rules." Nick opened the gate for Raina.

"And those are?" she asked, glancing up at him.

"Mind your own business, treat others as you hope to be treated, and do whatever you like as long as you don't spook the horses. It's worth pointing out that there are no horses. Oh, and pay your bar tab promptly. I should also add that it's one of the lowest points in the entire Commonwealth, and everything not nailed down moves through here sooner or later." Together they stepped over the threshold.

"Well, well, well. It's the detective. Tracking down another wayward husband to his mistress?" Nick had encountered Finn before, a small time hood and grifter.

"Why?' Nick parried. "Someone stand you up?"

"Tryin' that, what do they call it? Evasive language? On me?" Finn blustered. Then he looked Raina over. "And who are you, huh? Valentine's new dick-in-training? Of course, in your case, 'dick' would be the wrong word."

"I don't see how it's any of your business," Raina replied, cool words and cool eyes to match.

"You don't, huh? With your attitude, you're gonna need insurance around this town." He shifted into an even more threatening pose.

"Oh, extortion," Raina said, dismissively. She swung her shovel from her shoulder to a defensive position in front of her, and said, "Right now, you are standing between me and a bath where I don't have to haul and heat the water myself. Today started with raiders and supermutants. Then it was ghouls and gangsters. At this point I think I've killed at least thirty people today. One more won't make a _bit_ of difference."

"Uhhh..." Finn was not the brightest or the sharpest crayon in the box, but he still had some instincts when it came to self-preservation. "Okay, you know what? I'm gonna let you go. This time. No hard feelings, huh?"

At that moment, Hancock, self-appointed mayor of Goodneighbor, sauntered out of the shadows to address Finn, "Whoa, whoa! Time out! Nick Valentine pays one of his rare visits to town, and you go hassling his friend with that extortion crap? Good to see you, Nick."

Nick returned the greeting with a nod, and watched.

"The first time somebody walks through that gate, they're a guest," Hancock informed the petty thug. "We don't shake down guests like that around here."

"She's an outsider. She'll prolly never come back again, so what do you care?" Finn stuck out his prognathous chin.

"Everybody starts off as an outsider, Finn. Lay off the penny-ante extortion racket," Hancock's tone of voice had steel under the humor.

"You're soft, Hancock. You keep letting outsiders walk all over us, one day there'll be a new mayor." Finn didn't bother cloaking his bellligerence.

"C'mon, this is me we're talking about here. Let me tell you something..." Hancock put his arm around Finn's shoulders, leaned in as if to whisper a secret-and then he shanked the man twice in the gut, wiped the knife on Finn's shirt and let the body fall to the pavement like a bundle of dirty laundry. The knife went back out of sight. He turned his attention to Raina and Nick.

"Sorry you were treated to that bit of unpleasantness. Welcome to Goodneighbor," Hancock swept his arm around in a gesture of welcome. "The freest community in the Commonwealth. Don't let this little incident taint your view of us. Goodneighbor's of the people, for the people, ya feel me? Everyone's welcome."

"Thank you," Raina smiled, with her eyes as much as with her mouth, a real smile, not a ghastly desperate baring of teeth. "I like that philosophy. People ought to help each other and acceptance is a good start. Nice suit, by the way."

It was hard to tell given Hancock's characteristic ghoul skin, but Nick could have sworn the mayor of Goodneighbor reddened.

"Ya like it? My way of thinkin' is, just because you look like a zombie doesn't mean you have to give up style, ya know? I go for the 'Undead, but with sex appeal' look It _really_ draws the ladies," Hancock preened, adjusting his lapels to a slightly more jaunty angle.

"I'm sure," Raina turned up the wattage on her smile. "I always thought Erik would have had more girls than he could handle if he only stopped hiding and was more honest."

"Erik?" Hancock raised an eyebrow, or where his eyebrow would have been if he still had them.

"Yes," Raina faltered. "The, um, Phantom of the Opera. You know. From the book by Gaston Leroux."

"Haven't had the pleasure," Hancock's tone of voice hinted that he was not just talking about the book.

Now Raina was turning redder. "Ahem," Nick broke in. "Raina, this is John Hancock, mayor of Goodneighbor. John, may I introduce Raina Queen, who hails from Sanctuary. This is her first visit to the big city, such as it is these days. "

"Really?" Hancock glanced from the one to the other. "What brings you to Goodneighbor?"

"Necessity," Nick replied. "This is not the hour to try and get to Diamond City with any hope of doing so alive. Or in my case, functional."

"Well the Hotel Rexford is this way," Hancock pointed. "It isn't what it was, but then what is?"

"You'd be surprised," Raina told him happily.

"Believe me, sister, I already am."

"In a good way, I hope," she replied.

"Maybe in the best way," was his response. Their eyes met.

Nick noticed that they were almost the same height, but Raina was a hair taller. Not that it was relevant. Not yet, anyway. "Ahem!" he was louder about it this time.

"Well, don't let me keep ya from that hot bath," Hancock recovered first. "Nick, drop by the state house later...no, let's make it the Third Rail, and we'll get caught up."

As they walked away, Nick had the feeling that the mayor of Goodneighbor was still watching them.

"Nicely done,"Nick told her. "I was a little afraid at the start that you were going to clock him one with your shovel just for being a ghoul, given your recent experiences."

"The stabbing was disconcerting but then he was quite charming-Wait. What did you say? He's not a ghoul."

"Yes, he is." The synth detective eyed her.

"No. Ghouls smell horrible and they try to gnaw and bite you to death," Raina argued.

"You're thinking of feral ghouls. What do you think Hancock is, if he's not a ghoul?"

"Someone with massive radiation damage," she stated.

"That's true as far as it goes, but when someone is that damaged, they're called ghouls," Nick eyed her again, curiously. "Eventually, if he lives long enough for his mind to deteriorate, he'll be just like the ferals. It's inevitable. You really didn't see the resemblance?"

"No. _Everyone_ looks strange to me. The first time I saw a face that wasn't one of my sisters, I was horrified. It looked so _wrong_. I've gotten over that, for the most part, but...I still can't...can't _judge_ faces. Anyhow, it's wrong to call someone who is lucid and doesn't eat human flesh a ghoul."

"Really..." Nick said, his mind working. Or his CPU, anyway. "How do you think of me? Be honest, I can take it."

"What? As a person, of course," Raina replied.

"Yet I'm a synth," Nick Valentine pointed out.

"You are a person who happens to be a synth. I am a person who happens to be a...woman." He was sure she nearly said 'clone', but changed it at the last second.

He was silent a moment. "I wish more people thought like you," he said.

"I'm not sure I'd wish this on anyone else," she said. "Mostly what I feel is...lost, confused and lonely."

Nick Valentine smiled. "That's called 'being alive.' Or being self-aware, anyway. But you see this world with the eyes of someone who's new to it, and you haven't soaked up any of the crap people spout about each other." _Yet_ , he added mentally.

He saw her checked into the hotel and up to her room before he left to meet Hancock in the Third Rail.

There, Magnolia was laying down a smoky track in the smoky room, and Fahrenheit was watching her with her desire in her eyes. Hancock was at the other end of the bar, waiting. Nick crossed the joint to join him.

" _Where_ did you find her?" was the mayor's first question.

"I didn't. She found me," Nick replied. "Y'see, two weeks ago, I went looking for this dame named Darla, whose family thought she had been abducted by Skinny Malone. Heh. Turns out she was a ditzy two-face who lives for, and on, drama. She created the situation in the first place and was leading Skinny around by the nose...um, sorry, it's a figure of speech."

"No offense. It's ain't like _I'll_ ever have that problem," Hancock knocked back a shot and raised a finger for Charlie to pour him another.

"In which sense of the phrase?" Nick quipped. "Anyhow, Ellie knew where I was going, so when Raina showed up wanting my help, she saw someone who was armed, dangerous, and motivated. She sent Raina after me. By the way, Raina is a former Vault Dweller and brand new to the Commonwealth. She only came Topside about seven months ago. I hardly know what to make of her yet. If she'd been along when I went to see Skinny in the first place, I'd never have wound up in the hole for the best part of a month. In two sentences she pointed out to Skinny that Darla was the cause of all the trouble in the first place, and why. Yet for all of that, she's greener than grass, as straightforward as an arrow, and as harmless as a radscorpion."

"That's quite a combination," Hancock glanced at him. "Good looking, too."

"If you like the type," Nick said noncommittally.

"I could, given a chance. What's with the Phantom of the Opera stuff, do ya know?"

"Umm," The original Nick Valentine's memory coughed up a photo in an old book about the early days of movies, Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera. He looked, it had to be said, remarkably ghoul-like. He told Hancock about it, finishing with, "but that's all I can recall."

"Well, since it's about books, I know somebody who probably remembers. Hey, Daisy!" he called to a female ghoul at the other end of the bar. "Lemme buy you a drink and pick your brains."

"All right," the shopkeeper agreed, and joined them. "Oh, the Phantom of the Opera. Yeah, I read that. Read it and reread it a lot, too, when I was like fourteen. It's a love story and a horror story, and a comedy too. It's set in the Paris Opera House. Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, lives there, because he was one of the building contractors and put in secret rooms and passages. He-come to think of it, Erik _could_ have been a ghoul, from how he's described. No nose, deep black holes instead of eyes, strange skin, looks like death, not a lot of hair... I never connected it until now. They'd discovered radium by that time, so it's possible there _were_ ghouls back then."

She downed her drink and continued, "Anyhow, this girl Christine joins the opera as a singer, and Erik falls in love with her. She can't afford singing lessons, so he teaches her, saying he's the Angel of Music. She was very innocent and maybe not that smart, so she believed him. Of course there's another man, her childhood sweetheart, Raoul, and he's rich and handsome so Erik gets jealous. He kidnaps Christine, Raoul goes to find her-I'm leaving out a lot of the story, but that's what happens eventually-and Erik threatens to not just kill Raoul but blow up the whole Opera House if she doesn't marry him. She says yes, and he immediately lets her go, and Raoul too. Christine and Raoul live happily ever after, and Erik dies." Daisy sighed. "It's very romantic."

"Is it? Erik doesn't get the girl, and he croaks," Hancock said.

Daisy smacked his arm. "It's romantic because it's tragic," she scolded him. "Every girl who ever read it wanted to be with _Erik_ , not Raoul, who had all the personality of oatmeal. This about that smoothskin who came in with Nick?"

"Maybe," the ghoulish mayor bluffed.

"She's led a very sheltered life, apparently around a lot of books," Nick supplied. "She was genuinely shocked when I told her people like you are considered ghouls just as much as ferals."

"She doesn't? What does she think we are, then?" Hancock asked.

"People," Nick said. "As simple as that."

"She sounds like a nice kid," Daisy said. "It'll be a shame when this world breaks her."

"Well, I owe her one for hauling me out of Skinny's clutches," Nick lit a cigarette. "Plus, I have to say I like her. I think I may hang around until she isn't wet behind the ears anymore."

* * *

A/N: I quote from POTO: 'He (Erik) is extraordinarily thin and his dresscoat hangs on a skeleton frame. His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils. You just see two big black holes, as in a dead man's skull. His skin... is stretched across his bones like a drumhead. His nose is so little worth talking about that you can't see it side-face, and the absence of that nose is a horrible thing to look at. All the hair he has is three or four long dark locks on his forehead and behind his ears.'

So am I setting up a Raina/Hancock romance? I don't know. There are a lot of companions she hasn't met yet and I like things to happen organically. The romance, if any, with whoever it may happen, will never take precedence over the mission of revitalizing the Commonwealth.

Now: Guest, there is no self-destruct setting on the Vault, luckily. However, while R. has been Topside for seven months, she met Garvey and the settlers only two months ago, and they had a lot to do to make Sanctuary livable first. Now, however, word is going to spread about the settlement where they have foods and things seen nowhere else, and that they do a lot to help others. When spring comes, things will really get interesting!

Guestman: The compound poison with the ricin would work on third-gen synths. The new poison, which is basically curare, would not be fatal, because their hearts and lungs wouldn't become paralyzed. It would put them out of action for at least an hour, though. You again spotted what I'm up to, as I can just hear this happening: "You're here for more seed potatoes? What happened to the sacks of them we gave you last time? You _ate_ them? You were supposed to _plant_ them!"

Thank you to my other Guest and to all my readers!


	12. Good Neighbors

Nick left the Third Rail about midnight, stubbing out a last cigarette and saying "Good night and so long, Hancock. I expect we'll be gone before you're up and around."

"Yeah, Nick. Watch yerself." Hancock waved goodbye and returned to living it up. Except that it didn't feel so much like he was living it up these days. He was getting restless again, and it wasn't the kind of restlessness that any amount of chems could soothe. Well, that wasn't strictly accurate, because a really massive amount of chems would definitely cure him of restlessness, by seeing to it that he rested six feet under forever and ever. He wasn't ready for that yet.

He noticed the newest bloodstain on his cuff, a souvenir of Finn's passing. There were things you had to do when you were a mayor, and one of them was making sure Goodneighbor had the necessities, like food, water, chems, guns, ammo, and so on. Unless some miracle rendered them self-sufficient, they needed outsiders to come in and trade without fear of getting ripped off, ripped up, or raped. The irony was that in order to live without laws, you had to be honest, and some people just weren't capable of that. Like Finn. Or the Triggermen. They were really just raiders in better suits, and there were far too many of them in town for his liking.

Picking a canister of Jet off the bar, he shook it and inhaled deeply. One advantage of being a Ghoul was, you could do a lot more chems. The disadvantage was that you _had_ to do a lot more chems, because they didn't have the same kick. Jet was made from the fumes given off by the manure of Brahmins fed on a special supplement, so basically you were getting high on cow farts, although most manufacturers did add something to make it smell better. It didn't do a lot for ghouls, although there was supposed to be a stronger version called Ultrajet made especially for ghouls, invented by a ghoul. He'd bought what someone claimed was Ultrajet a few times, but since there was no difference to the high, he figured he'd gotten ripped off.

He wanted a new chem, something he'd never done before, but there wasn't anything he hadn't done at this point, except maybe X-cell. Maybe he ought to get clean again and go without for a while so the same old, same old had more of a punch again.

Hancock dropped the now empty canister and swiveled on his barstool. One of the regulars, a female ghoul he knew, perked up and gave him a smile, but it was the kind of smile which meant, 'You have chems and I have a vagina. Let's share.' Which could be okay, if all both of you were looking for was a quick fix. Yet he found himself thinking about Raina Queen and _her_ smile, which was warm, sweet, joyous and even a little goofy. It would be nice to see her smile like that again, especially if it was at him. He even harbored a thought or two about telling her she had really beautiful eyes, as much as because of what they saw as how they looked. Then the mayor of Goodneighbor grimaced. He must be drunker than he thought, getting all sentimental about a smoothskin who just walked in one day with Nick and who would walk out again the next and probably never return.

Then again, maybe he'd turn in now so there was a chance of being awake and not hungover by the time she and Valentine left in the morning...

* * *

Since he didn't sleep, Nick Valentine took a seat in the hall outside Raina's room. Before settling in, he glanced in on her. King immediately sprang up into a defensive stance, but relaxed when he saw it was someone he knew. Raina was fast asleep. He made sure to be quiet when he slipped the manuscripts for her booklets out of her pack. On the way to Goodneighbor, she had told him why she went to see Piper in the first place, and he had expressed an interest in reading what she'd written thus far. She took him up on that, and asked him to take note of wherever it could be improved.

Settling down in a chair, he began on the agriculture booklet. The fact that Raina had included the scientific name of every single plant made him smile and shake his head at the same time. Nobody would know or care what the plants were called in Latin except for the people she ought to avoid the most—the Institute. It was a lead pipe cinch that they would get wind of this sooner or later, but they didn't need to know they were specifically looking for someone that well educated and intelligent. The scientific names would have to go.

Going from the big picture to the smaller one for the moment, she had listed everything alphabetically. Okay, that was a legit way of organizing something, nobody could deny that. If, that is, you knew exactly what you were looking for. The people she was writing this for, the settlers and farmers trying to choose which of these new crops to grow, wouldn't. A better idea would be to divide them up into categories, like vegetables, herbs, fruit, and then all other plants, the ones which weren't grown for eating, like flax, indigo and cedar. Then there was her notion of giving everything away. It was a generous idea, but between the people who were suspicious and those who would be only too happy to play her for a sucker, it was bound to be a disaster. There were too many greedy bastards out there.

While he read, he was also hearing sounds around the hotel without listening to them, like a couple having a fight on the floor above them, which then led to reconciliation and make-up sex. Someone much nearer to them was sobbing, heavy but muffled sobs, as though into a pillow. Then he heard ripping sounds, and after that, the sounds of chair legs scraping against the floor.

He started in on the animal care booklet. This one was simpler, as it only covered rabbits, chickens and briefly, bee keeping. He heard a chair fall over, then a gurgling sound and the staccato of uneven hammering on the wall.

At that point, all the audible clues added up. He dropped the pages and charged into the room next door, where a ghoul had made the classic mistake when trying to hang himself: too short a drop. His neck hadn't broken, and he was now dangling from the noose, trying to free himself with both hands but unable to because his weight had tightened the rope he'd braided out of sheets. He'd die all right, but slowly and agonizingly of strangulation.

Nobody ought to have to die like that, even if they wanted to commit suicide in the first place. Nick grabbed the man around the waist, lifting him up so the rope could go slack. The ghoul immediately ripped the loop away, gasping and wheezing for breath. Nick set him down, and the man crumpled against the wall. "Damn it," he said, raspy-voiced. " _Another_ thing I can't get right."

"What's going on?" Raina appeared in the doorway, looking sleep rumpled and blinking in the light.

"This gentleman here tried something he now regrets. What's your name, pal?" Nick asked him.

The ghoul made a horrible gurgle of laughter. "Murray. Murray Mitchell. It's been a long, long time since anyone bothered to ask." He jumped in his seat, because King, with the instinctive sympathy of some animals, had pressed his cold, wet nose into the ghoul's hand. "Nice dog," he said, and petted the German Shepard.

"Well, Mr. Mitchell, what's your story?" Nick asked. Raina looked from one man to the other, picked up the kicked-over chair, and sat in it.

The ghoul gurgled again. "For two hundred years I've been going from place to place, not belonging anywhere. I got screwed over once, you see. Twice, in a way. I used to be a Vault-Tec rep, before the war. I worked for them for twenty years, going door to door, signing people up. The day the bombs dropped, I was working up in a suburb called Sanctuary Hills- -."

Raina made a very faint sound at that, but she didn't interrupt.

"There was a vault right there, 111. They wouldn't let me in. Twenty years of service, and I 'wasn't on the list.' Then the heat wave hit...and when it had passed, there were bodies all around me, and I looked like this. Vault-Tec screwed me by shutting me out. Death did the same thing. I've been so alone. So alone..." The last part came out as a painful moan. Then he went silent except for his wheezy breathing.

Raina spoke, her voice low and gentle. "Everyone in Vault 111 died. I live near Sanctuary, and a few weeks ago three of us went to see if there was anything useful in there. We found a tomb. It was a cryovault-the inhabitants were frozen as they entered. The staff were supposed to be let out after eighty days. They weren't. Journal entries on the computers told the tale. They ran out of food, Vault-Tec never gave the okay to leave, and the Overseer refused to break quarantine. The staff rioted. No one got out alive. The inhabitants slept on in cryostasis until the systems failed. Then they died too."

"That might have been a better way to go than this," Mitchell said, scuffing his feet on the floor. "Just dying in your sleep..."

"No. They didn't die in their sleep. They woke up and couldn't get out of their cryopods. It looked like a very bad way to die. Mr. Mitchell-," she began.

"Call me Murray," he said, sounding like he hadn't slept in two hundred ten years.

"Murray, then. I lived my whole life in a Vault, up until seven months ago. My whole family lived there, generations of us. I'm the only one left, but we were safe there. I'm here today, alive today, because of it. You, or somebody like you, somebody doing the same job, helped us. Perhaps it wasn't you, but I will never get the chance to meet them. So... Thank you, Murray. Thank you for saving my life."

She reached out and touched his hand, and the dam burst. He sobbed, hoarse, racking sobs. When he had himself under control again, he patted her hand and said, "You're welcome. Which Vault was it? 84? I hear they're still going strong."

"No. Our Vault didn't have a number. We had a symbol, a seedling against the sun. It was an Envirovault." Raina told him.

"An Envirovault...there weren't many of those. Mostly they were attached to universities. You said you live out around Sanctuary. I tried staying around there at first, but that was two hundred years ago. Didn't that crazy Mr. Handy drive you off?"

"Codsworth? I have a Mr. Handy of my own-well, he was my family's Mr. Handy and since I'm the last one, he's mine now. Jonny was able to talk to him bot to bot, and that helped. Then when we confirmed his family was gone, he asked we use the reset codes that came with him so he could bond afresh with the community. It seemed a drastic measure, but he wanted it that way. He's happier now."

"That's good. It was a nice place, a nice community. I remember there was this young couple with a baby-they were the last ones I signed. I'm glad you have a home," he said. "At least you have one. A young girl like you, it would be really rough on you. Nobody wants to take ghouls into their settlements, for fear they'll go feral. Nobody wants a ghoul with two hundred years of Vault-Tec experience"

"We need to get rid of the word 'ghoul'," Raina said with disgust. "Negativity is a vicious cycle. You're lucid...so, I'm calling you a lucid."

Amused, Nick asked, "Gonna change the whole entire language by yourself, kid?"

"The revolution starts here," she riposted. "Anyhow, what's wrong with Goodneighbor? It seems very inclusive,"

"It is, but it's not exactly my kind of town," Murray said. "I'm a salesman, not a con artist. I can't shoot worth a damn and I hate violence. There just isn't any work for me here."

What he had said sparked an idea in Nick's neural circuitry. "You say you're a salesman. A good one?"

"Best in my area," Murray said with pride. "Hah, best in the entire state, and that's not just me bragging."

"Good. Hire him," he told Raina.

"Hire him?" she asked as the ghoul-no, the _lucid_ -said simultaneously, "Hire me?"

"Come spring, you're going to have more on your hands than you realize right now. It's true I'm no settler, but I can tell you this: You're going to need someone who can help people make informed decisions about what to plant. They'll have to keep track of who's planting what and where. They may have to do some traveling to see for themselves what kind of land people are planting," he told Raina.

To Murray, he said, "Our young friend here is reinventing the mail-order seed catalog company with some seeds and things from her vault. She has plenty of know-how when it comes to growing crops, but no business experience. She needs someone who can help her achieve her goals without her getting ripped off. This is one of those coincidences that makes you wonder if there really is such a thing as serendipity."

Raina looked thoughtful. "If you think so, Nick... It's a couple of months until people will be planting again, and in that time, I could educate Murray about soil types and so on...but all of that is details. Would you be willing?" she asked the lucid. "There's plenty of room in Sanctuary, and I know Preston, who's more or less the leader of it, has no prejudice against ghouls."

"You're serious?" Murray said. "A job and a place to stay, somewhere I'd belong? Hell, I wouldn't even ask for caps."

"Now don't go saying anything foolish," Nick counseled him. "Raina is enough of an idealist for three people put together."

* * *

A/N: I figured the Vault Tec rep needed an actual name, so 'Murray Mitchell' it is. Reader Darman Skirata pointed out that Raina did not mention what happened to Shaun and his parents. Yes, they (meaning Raina, Sturges and Preston) found that two pods had been breached and their inhabitants shot, and records showed that a baby was missing, but Raina left that out at this time. It seemed like too much detail.

Huge snowfall all weekend where I am, so maybe I'll be able to knock out another chapter.

Guestman: Worse than a Pair of Handcuffs is very good, and thanks for turning me on to it. You're giving me ideas pertaining to Covenant and curare. I don't like that place. I truly don't. Why not write them? (Your fics, that is). I live in the DC area so I really have to play F3 at some point. I plan to have her meet Danse and the BoS in Cambridge in a couple of chapters. Mac will wait until her next visit to Goodneighbor. And I am in complete agreement with you regarding acceptance. Everybody play nice, okay?

Hyperventi: Thanks! I can tell why you chose your name. ;)


	13. Being a Good Neighbor

Today Raina planned to accompany Nick back to Diamond City, to have a look at the file he had on her family. At the moment, he was visiting some people he knew in the neighborhood, having mentioned a Doctor Amari and a man named Kent who ran the Silver Shroud radio broadcast. Raina had written a note to Preston to tell him she would be gone a little longer, and a letter of introduction for Murray, so he wouldn't just be a random settler showing up on their doorstep. Then she had gone down to the street to look around the community.

Almost as soon as she stepped out of the hotel, Hancock emerged from the State House onto a balcony to deliver a speech to his constituents. She stopped to listen.

"Hey, everyone! Gather round. Let's kick the breeze back, shoot the fat… Now I know you all are doing your own thing, but I don't want anyone here to forget what really matters." He stopped for a moment to speak more personally to a couple of those gathered around, then went on.

"All right, all right. We're getting off track. What was I saying? Oh, that's right. What matters. We freaks gotta stick together, and the best way to stick together is to keep an eye out for what drives us apart, you feel me?"

The crowd nodded and made noises of agreement, one or two calling out encouragement. "You tell it like it is!"

He nodded in acknowledgment. "Now what out there in our big friendly Commonwealth would want to drive us apart? What kind of twisted, un-neighborly boogeyman would want to hurt our peaceful community?"

"The Institute and their synths!" a woman cried out.

"That's right! Who said that? Come on up to my office later. You've earned yourself some Jet. The Institute! They're the real enemy! Not the raiders, not the Supermutants, not even those tools over in Diamond City."

While he spoke, Raina watched him and considered. In the last twenty-four or so hours, she had met three people who stood out among the other citizens of the Commonwealth, Piper, Nick, and now Hancock. Preston was like them, too. Lights in the darkness, glowing like candles in a window to show the way to home and safety. If she were to name their defining attributes, Piper's would be… truth. Nick's would be justice, Preston's would be helping, and Hancock's would be…what? As yet she didn't know, but she liked him instinctively. She liked the way the corners of his eyes crinkled up when he smiled, too.

He bantered with another member of the crowd before he returned to his theme.

"I want you all to keep the Institute in mind. When someone starts acting funny, when people are doing things they don't normally do, when family starts pushing you away for no reason… We all know who's behind that kind of shit. And the only way to stop it is to stick together. They can't control us if we're not afraid! Now, who's scared of the Institute?"

"Not us!" the crowd shouted.

"And which town in the Commonwealth should the Institute not fuck with?"

"Goodneighbor!" came the reply.

"And who's in charge of Goodneighbor?"

"Hancock! Of the people, for the people!"

The mayor raised a hand, smiled, nodded, and went back in.

Raina went to shop while she waited for Nick and put away her thoughts about the mayor of Goodneighbor. Kl-E-O, proprietor of the shop Kill or Be Killed, had several fusion cores for sale and according to her, almost always had them in stock, but the bad news was, Raina couldn't afford even one of them. Having paid Piper two hundred caps the day before, she was over a hundred caps short, even though she'd cleared out everything she could barter with _. Next time I leave home_ , she thought, _I'll bring a pound of marijuana so I'll have something better to trade than another shoddy little pipe pistol_. All she had with her was a couple of joints, not enough for a fusion core.

"I saw what happened last night when you came in," Kl-E-O leaned over the counter to speak to her in almost a whisper, "I'm not saying this just for the sake of making a sale, but dear, you need something with a little more style."

"Than what?" Raina asked, wondering precisely what the robot meant. Her clothes? Her pack? Her escort? (If Kl-E-O meant Nick, Raina would have a few choice words for her. Nick was wonderful.)

"The shovel. Obviously it's practical for some things, but as a melee weapon, it's unwieldy and unbalanced. No flexibility. For you, I'd recommend something like a sword. You have more upper body strength than the average human woman, I can tell from your arms."

"I tried using a machete but it just didn't have the stopping power," she explained.

"Oh, machetes," the robot said dismissively. "Fine if you want to keep hacking away at your opponent, but they lack finesse. Little better than pot metal, actually. A higher grade of steel would cut through flesh and bone like butter, and I can tell you where to go—the only question is, do you dare to do it?"

"Where?" Raina asked, intrigued.

"The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston," Kl-E-O said, practically into Raina's ear. "Among other things, it had _the_ finest collection of Japanese art and handcrafts on the East Coast…including an impressive number of samurai swords. Unplundered. Also overrun by ferals, but I'm sure you would make small work of them. The only catch is that you'd have to break into their conservation vaults."

"Am I the first who you've shared this information with?" Raina was learning rapidly.

"No, but you could be the first to come back," the merchant purred.

"I see. So it's really dangerous. What do you want in return for this information?" Raina asked. "It's too juicy a tidbit to come for free."

"First chance at what you don't want to keep for yourself, baby. That's all. Depending on how much you can carry, this haul could keep you in fusion cores for the rest of the century." The robot stood up.

"I'll have to think about it," she said.

Someone knocked on the wall from the other side. "Come see me before you leave town!" a gritty female voice called.

"That's Daisy," Kl-E-O remarked. "Go see what she wants—just remember who pointed you to the Museum."

"I will," Raina promised.

Daisy was a Lucid, as it happened, and while she had a welcoming smile on her face, she was also looking at Raina's head with great interest. "I overheard part of your conversation with Kle-O, that you're a little short on caps at the moment. I was thinking of sending you on an errand for me, but I've just thought of something else. Is your hair virgin?"

Raina reached up to touch her tresses. "I know what they mean by 'virgin' as it applied to people, but not specifically to hair."

"Sorry, I mean, has it ever been chemically processed? Colored, straightened or permed?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

Daisy reached up and patted her own neat coif. "See this? It's a wig. One of the side effects of radiation is hair loss, partial or total. It's not so bad for men, as most of them lose their hair eventually, but for women—it's a terrible blow. Worse than losing our dewy-fresh complexions, even, because we all become hags if we live long enough, but a woman's hair is her crowning glory. So the answer is wigs. If you would be willing to cut yours—not all of it, just ten or twelve inches, I would pay you two hundred caps for it. Two hundred caps, plus the knowledge that you've helped someone feel better about herself."

Raina frowned in thought. It wasn't that she was opposed to the idea, but that it was Vicky who had the shorter hair. _Vicky is gone, and my hair isn't me. I'm not so insecure that my hair is key to my identity. After all, it will grow back._ And it had gotten very long over the last few months. Long and _heavy_.

"I think you're trying to play up on my kindheartedness. Four hundred," she replied.

"Two fifty," Daisy countered. They agreed upon three hundred caps, Raina bound the portion she was cutting at the top and bottom, then used the scissors Daisy lent her.

"Do you have a mirror?" she asked after she handed over her shorn ponytail.

"No, I'm sorry. But you look nice with shorter hair. I didn't realize how curly your hair is until now. The length weighed it down," Daisy said. "Tell you what, I'll throw in an extra fifteen caps, that way you can go to the barber in Diamond City and have them style it for you."

"Thank you," Raina said. "What was the other thing you were thinking about, before you got distracted?"

"Oh! The library. I understand you're a reader."

"I am, but how did you learn that?" Raina's brow furrowed.

"You made _quite_ an impression on our mayor," Daisy smiled, arching a penciled-on eyebrow. "He wanted to know who 'Erik' was, and he knew I'd probably know."

"That makes sense," Raina nodded.

"Anyway, the Boston Public Library's been taken over by Supermutants. It's so big they feel normal sized in it. Ordinarily I'd say, they're welcome to it, but I have a lot of good memories connected to that library. Y'see, along with the rad damage, there's metabolic changes that go along with being a ghoul. You live a very, very long time."

"I didn't know that," Raina said. "But there are a lot of things of which I am ignorant."

Daisy patted her hand. "Don't worry. You'll catch up. Anyhow, I hate to think of those Supermutants ruining the old library. I'm willing to pay to have them cleared out of there, but it can wait for another time, since now you have a lot more caps."

"I need to replenish my darts before heading out to do something that major, anyway," Raina said. "I gather that chems are highly prized here. Am I right about that?"

Daisy gurgled in laughter. "Oh, yeah. Life is hard, and sooner or later, everybody needs something to cushion the hurt. Why? You buying or selling?"

"Selling, potentially. If you think there'd be a market for these." Raina brought out the tin where she carried her first aid supplies and medications, including joints. She had not offered them to Kl-E-O on the grounds that the robot could not smoke.

She handed the two joints to Daisy, whose brow furrowed. "I haven't seen anything like this in over two hundred years. Are these really cannabis?" She ran one under her nose hole, rubbing it between her fingers. "I'll be damned! They are. Where did you find these?"

For a moment, she considered saying, 'Some caravaneer or other', but since she was trying to sell to Daisy in the future, that was hardly an intelligent answer. Raina instead said, "I grew them. My family was prepared for anything, back in the day."

"And here I was thinking butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. It goes to show you never can tell about people. Do you like to...blow a cloud yourself?"

"Now and then. Not often. I have too much work to get through," she told the friendly woman.

"I hear you. Yes, you'll find buyers here. How much can you supply, when will it be ready and what are you asking for it?"

"I usually trade at the rate of two fusion cores per quarter pound," Raina replied. "I was planning to come back to the area in two or three weeks, and I'd need caps more than cores then, so...eight hundred caps No seeds or stems, mind."

"Done. That gives me time to get as much together. What do I owe you for these?" Daisy indicated the two joints.

"Consider them a thank you for throwing in the fifteen extra and directing me to the barber in Diamond City," Raina said. "So-a quarter pound, no seeds or stems, eight hundred caps. Shake on it?"

"Of course," Daisy held out her rad-burned hand, tilting her head a little and watching Raina closely as they shook hands. "So, it really _doesn't_ bother you."

"What doesn't?" Raina asked, because she had no idea what the older woman was referring to.

"The whole ghoul business. There are people who can fake it, until the moment comes when they actually have to make skin contact. Then they falter."

"It bothers me that it bothers other people. You're lucid, amiable, and most importantly, you're not trying to kill me," Raina shrugged. "That last part counts for a lot."

Daisy chuckled. "You get that a lot, do you?"

"Almost constantly, some days. This time I've spent in Goodneighbor is the longest stretch no one's tried anything since I left Sanctuary two days ago."

At that moment, Nick came up. "Are you ready-What happened to your hair?"

"Daisy bought part of it. I feel so much freer now-I had no idea how heavy it had gotten until I cut it."

He eyed her head. "Well, if you're happy with it. I had an idea. Last night, I read over your stuff. You probably think you have a lot more to write, but if anything, you need to edit. What do you say we put Ellie on it to help you? With a little effort and any luck, you may have a finished manuscript to give Piper by the end of the day."

"I don't know..." She looked at the bag of caps Daisy had paid her for her hair, and figured that she had just enough to pay Piper the second payment. "But I'm willing to discuss it while we walk. Daisy, I'll see you in a few weeks. Take care."

"You too," the shopkeeper waved good bye.

As the gate closed behind them, Hancock appeared, looking around the square.

"Hey! Over here!" Daisy waved to him. When he came over, she told him, "You just missed them, loverboy. However, I can tell you a few things now that you don't know. First of all, Miss Raina is not faking it when it comes to accepting ghouls simply as people. She isn't even trying too hard, like a certain young smoothskin who blew into town about ten years ago, name of John McDonough. Remember him?"

Hancock smiled a little at hearing his former name. "Yeah, but he got over it."

"He did. Second, she's coming back to Goodneighbor in about two or three weeks, because we shook hands on a deal." She held up the joints. "Want to guess what these are?"

"Uhhh..."

"This is cannabis. Pot. Wacky weed. Herb tea," Daisy pulled out a flip lighter. "Want a taste?"

"Marijuana? Are you shitting me?"

"Hey, I had an adventurous girlhood, two hundred fifty years back. I can tell when somebody's trying to pass oregano off on me. Here." She lit one and took a drag on it, holding up a finger, before she let it out slowly. "That's how you smoke it. Not like cigarettes."

"All right," Hancock took the joint. After a few moments contemplation, he said, "That's...interesting. Like getting smacked upside the head with a comfy pillow wrapped around a brick. Most chems, you just get the brick. Leaves ya dry-mouthed, though." Then he giggled. "So, what, ah, what's the connection? Between Raina and this."

"She grows it."

"Really? And she's coming back to town..."

* * *

A/N: So, a little more than a week between chapters, but here it is. Huge snowstorms= more work, when you're an adult. More work = _tired_.

Guestman: the steam is there! So you're from the area? Small world... Now I definitely need to go back and play f3.

Thank you to my other reviewers, I'm so impatient to post this but I will reply better next chapter.


	14. Nothing More Important

Back at the Valentine Detective Agency office:

"This is amazing!" Ellie marveled as she read. "Beans, beets, cabbage, cucumbers—you really have seeds for all these things?"

"Yes," Raina replied. "And there are different varieties, too. I figured, the first few years, it would be better just to get things to people without offering two dozen different kinds of beans, for example."

"I have to agree there, Greenie," Piper put in.

"Greenie?" Raina looked at the reporter. She had opted to tag along from the moment Nick, Raina and King entered Diamond City, and she had offered to help compile the final draft.

"I don't know, it seems like you need a nickname, and 'Queenie' is too obvious. You're new to Topside, so in that way, you're green, and you're bringing back green things, plus you're what they call olive-skinned. So, Greenie."

The agroecologist thought about it a moment and shrugged. "Okay. To you I can be Greenie."

"I wonder about whether you ought to offer flowers," Nick tightened the screws in his naked metal wrist. The housing was stripped, which was why they kept coming loose. Someday they'd refuse to stay in at all, and then he would be….screwed. He grimaced at the unintentional pun.

"Most of them have practical uses," Raina said. "Nasturtium blossoms are edible, sort of peppery tasting, and they go good in salads. Pot marigolds are good as seasoning in soups, and feverfew reduces fevers. You can use stewed boneset stalks to make casts, and as an herb it has a lot of uses. I admit zinnias don't do anything besides look pretty, but they're easy to grow. Life ought to be about more than just survival."

"I'm not against flowers or a bit of beauty in life, it's just that with so little land cleared for planting, will people really want to spare any for something they can't eat or use in other ways?" Nick put the screwdriver back in his pocket and took out his cigarettes.

"Yes, they will," Ellie said staunchly, "even if it's just a few in a bed by their front door. I have to agree with Nick when it comes to putting a price on things. You have to. Have you ever heard the expression, 'You get what you pay for?' If you give these seeds and plants away, people will either think they're worthless, or that it's some kind of Institute trap and you're an Institute agent. And believe me, you _don't_ want that."

"Yeah, Greenie. You don't." Piper echoed. "Besides, you're having trouble scraping together enough caps to pay for the printing. Nick said you sold your hair to Daisy in Goodneighbor to help fund it."

"Oh, I was wondering what happened to her hair," Ellie said, enlightenment dawning in her voice.

Nick screwed up his face in a sympathetic wince. "Raina, I get the impression you think charging money, I dunno, taints what you're doing. It doesn't, as long as you keep prices within what people can afford either in caps or trade. You ought to at least make enough to cover your expenses. After all, you're hurting for fusion cores, aren't you?"

"Yes," she said, drawing out the word, "but—."

"Imagine this scenario," he waved a hand, sending tendrils of smoke around the room. "Somebody comes by and takes several sacks of your best seed potatoes. They say 'Thank you', but they snicker as they walk away because they're actually raiders who look at you and see a sucker. All they're going to do is eat them or make them into moonshine, and come back in a few weeks for more with some sob story. Believe me, that's exactly what's going to happen—if you just give it away."

"I hadn't thought of that," Raina admitted, sounding very young and small.

"Well, like Piper said, you're green in the sense of inexperienced. The point is, you can be a do-gooder and still make money. Take me as an example. Speaking of which, I have to go tell my client his daughter is with Skinny of her own free will. I'll bring you all back Nuka-Colas and noodle cups."

He left the office and made his way to the house on the upper stands, pausing to greet people along the way, most of whom were surprised to see he was back. Darla's father was not pleased, which Nick had anticipated, but he paid half the promised fee, which Nick had not foreseen. A pleasant surprise, and it more than covered the colas and noodles. He got four of each and dropped a soda and cup of soup off with Nat, Piper's sister before he went back to the shack he called home.

The three young women were hard at work when he returned, and fortified with lunch, soon worked out what was going to stay and what would be cut.

"I really can't fit everything about beekeeping in a booklet," Raina said with regret, "so we might as well cut that part out entirely. If someone wants one for their settlement, they'll have to come and spend six months working with me. I can only manage maybe five new hives this coming year, anyhow."

"That you have any at all is just fantastic. Literally. Will you have enough seeds and plants to go around, though?" Ellie looked up from the pages she was marking.

"I asked Preston how many settlements he thought there were, and he said about thirteen to fifteen, and perhaps as many more places which would do for new ones, so I planned for an average of five acres each," Raina replied, rearranging the order of her pages. "Next year I can plant the other big Envirovault, after the five thousand Super Ginko seedlings are set out. After that I hope people will be saving their own seeds, trading with each other and replanting from their stock. It'll be exciting to see new hybrids and varieties….why are you all staring at me?"

"Five thousand whats, Greenie?" Piper voiced what was on everyone's mind.

"Super Ginkos. They're trees," Raina's face lit up. "They may be my family's greatest development. Y'see, ordinary ginko trees are living fossils, unchanged for over two hundred million years. They shrug off pollution and radiation, they thrive in practically any soil, and they even produce edible fruits and seeds—okay, the fruits may smell like vomit, but you _can_ eat them and the seeds have medicinal properties as well. Six ginkos survived the bombing of Hiroshima within two kilometers of the blast site without major physical or chromosomal damage—too much information, huh?

"Super Ginkos differ from regular ginkos in that they don't need sunlight as long as there's sufficient ambient radiation. They clean up their environment by absorbing the rads—call it radiosynthesis rather than photosynthesis, and the more radiation there is, the faster they grow. I estimate that in five hundred years, the Glowing Sea will be as inhabitable as the rest of the Commonwealth. Because one male tree can pollinate a lot of female trees, the ratio will be one male for every four females, and—."

"Who—why?" Ellie struggled to put words together. "Your family were scientists who developed plants?"

"Yes. The mut fruit and razorgrain were two of ours. My cousins brought them out when they went Topside, and those two caught on, but the Super Ginko wasn't ready until fairly recently. I just wish I wasn't the only one of us left," Raina finished the broth in the bottom of her noodle cup.

"I thought it was just a small Envirovault," Piper said.

"It goes without saying," Nick cut through the conversation, "that none of this is to leave my office."

He was looking at Raina with new eyes. The one person who was the most important to the future of the Commonwealth and probably a lot more than just the Commonwealth, was sitting on his floor at that moment, drinking a Nuka-Cola and rearranging her notes on keeping chickens.

 _And she doesn't know how important she is. Hah, she'd probably scoff and depreciate it if I told her that. She's a sweet goofy kid, a genius in intellect but innocent as a child when it comes to the world._ _ **Anything**_ _could kill her—a stray bullet, a lucky blow, a germ in impure water, radiation sickness, cancer… and she'd be as dead as her sisters. She's the only one who has the knowledge, both the theory and the practical know-how. Hell, she's the only one who even knows where her Vault is._

 _All right. I know what my job is. I_ _ **have**_ _to keep her alive. I have to. Nothing I've ever done, nothing the real Nick Valentine ever did, comes close to it._

"About this Glowing Sea business," he said. "How are you planning on carrying that out? Because if you thought one Deathclaw was bad—well, the Sea has dozens of them, all of them bigger and meaner than the one you ran into in Concord. I've been to the Glowing Sea, looking for a man who joined up with the Children of the Atom, these religious nuts who live out there. It's not just Deathclaws. All the insects and creatures out there are bigger and meaner than the ones you find around here. Then there's the radiation, the Children of the Atom, who, quite frankly, are mostly maniacs and won't like you planting trees that clean up the area, the radiation, the feral ghouls, the radiation, the uneven terrain which you can't even see because noon on a clear day in there is as dark as dusk out here, the radiation, the Supermutants—oh, and did I mention the radiation? It's bad."

"I have a radiation suit," she said, "and Jonny, my Mr. Handy, would be going along, as well as a couple of agrobots."

"When are you planning on doing this?" he asked.

"In February, before it's time to break ground for spring planting out here."

"Raina, if I had hair you'd make me tear it out," Nick pinched the bridge of his nose, not because he had a headache but because the gesture expressed what he was feeling. "Okay. You and I, we get along, right?"

"Yes," she said. "You're a good person, you're good company and you're a very good shot."

"Good, because I'm sticking to you like your shadow and not leaving you unless there's somebody equally reliable who'll have your back. No arguments."

Piper made a sound of sheer frustration and exasperation that sounded like a train whistle combined with a boiling tea kettle at close quarters. "I can't believe this! This story gets better and better and it'll be years before I can tell it. Can I at least interview you as to what Topside is like to a Vault Dweller? I won't say anything about plants—I'll write that you came from that vault right by Sanctuary. There weren't any other survivors, so nobody will be able to say otherwise. It was 111, wasn't it?"

"Yes. Sure, why not?"

Little did they know that one innocent little statement would do more to call the attention of the Institute than anything else, because someone there had a vested interest in anything to do with that particular vault…

A/N: Yes. Kellogg will be sent out to look for her. Probably not next chapter, though. Next chapter ought to be meeting Danse, but the plot bunnies are hopping.

Guestman—Yes! That O-wakizashi will be hers, and I just have to write an appropriately harrowing account of how she gets it. Plus a bunch of other things. Anyone fancy a Monet for their walls? I think you have the beginning of a very good story going there. Dialog—it took a while to come to me, too, but when you find the right voice, it will fall into place. I am *sure* the Brotherhood is as down on clones as on other deviants from the human norm. Yes, Danse is loyalty, King unconditional love, Curie=curiosity, Deacon, imagination…

Thank you, Guest! Hope you like this chapter.

Hyperventi—yeah, the supply will be growing fast.


	15. Ill Met By Stormlight

Knight Rhys had a broken leg. Paladin Danse might be in power armor, but the ghouls soaked up laser bolts like sponges, and besides, even he had limits. He was tiring. Haylen could tell.

She might be a Senior Scribe, but she was still just a scribe, lightly armed and armored. Once Danse fell—and as another wave of ghouls assaulted them, mere feet away from safety, that fall might happen soon—she would be torn to shreds by the horde.

The eerie, dirty yellow-green sky flickered, showering them with rads. She had always wondered if the radstorms stimulated the ferals somehow, because there always seemed to be more of them during one. It didn't seem likely that she would ever get to compile any data on it, though, because it would take a miracle to save them now. The emergency beacon sang out their plea for help, over and over, but if anyone heard, they obviously didn't care.

Haylen's mind flashed irrelevantly back to the demonstration of that one-hit-kill poison on the Prydwen. If only, if only, if….

Groaning and flailing, another wave of feral ghouls charged. There were ones so ancient and withered you couldn't tell whether they had been men or women, though they were stark naked. There were newer ones which still wore ragged, filthy clothes. There were the ones which glowed and oozed horrible globs of greenish jelly when they were hit. Ghouls and more ghouls. 'For every sound that floats/ From the rust within their throats/ Is a groan.' There were so many of them that now they had to crawl over their own dead to get to the three members of the Brotherhood.

When she saw a feral jerk, convulse, and drop, dark froth spilling from its mouth, its eyes, everywhere, she thought it was a hallucination for a moment, a wish-fulfillment fantasy, but then another fell, and she heard gunshots as well, not from their guns, but somewhere out there in the filthy storm. And was that, could that be, the menacing growl of an attack dog?

Now the tide was turning. Between whoever was out there picking off ferals, and Danse and Haylen's own efforts, there were fewer of them. Then a male voice, rough and ragged, called out "Grenade!"

A flash of light and heat, and suddenly the area in front of the Cambridge Police station was clear. Clear of live ghouls, anyway. There were plenty of dead strewn around.

Out of the storm came three figures. A man in a hat and a pre-war trench coat, a woman in combat armor topped with a leather coat, and by her side, a dog. In the putrid-colored light from the storm, it was hard to see more than profiles.

"It's sad how many of them have something like a locket or a child's toy on them," Haylen heard the woman say. "Something of the person they used to be."

"Yeah," the man said. "Reminds you you're shooting somebody you might have liked to know, once."

"Is it possible they actually do come back to life?" the woman asked. "I don't care how overpopulated the world was before, sooner or later you'd think we'd make some kind of dent in their numbers. Instead, it seems like no matter how many we kill, the next time we swing by that location, there are just as many, if not more. Also, there are never any piles of bodies from the last time."

"That's a horrifying thought, but no," the man replied. "It may seem like we get swarmed by hundreds of ferals at a time, but usually it's less than twenty. Back when it was Massachusetts, this area was home to millions. As for why we never see any piles of old bodies—well, let's just say that like Supermutants, when ferals are hungry, they don't care what they eat as long as it's meat. I've seen them at it. Not that it's only ferals who eat ferals. Radroaches, molerats, bloatflies..."

"Nick, that is the most disgusting thing I've heard yet today."

He chuckled. "Good thing it's nearly tomorrow, then, because it'll be hard to top that."

"Hey!" Danse shouted, interrupting their banter. "You nearly got yourselves killed, civilians. Who are you and what is your business here?"

"Um, the usual response when people come to your rescue is 'Thank you'," the man said, pointedly. He was hanging back beyond the barriers, covering the street in case of another attack.

The woman had been poking around the corpses, but now she straightened up and came over. "I'm Raina Queen. We, ah, wanted to consult a terminal in the police station and on the way here we, um, heard your distress call." In the pool of light at the entrance, she was revealed to be young, medium height, with the kind of build that said she had not missed many meals but that she also worked hard for every calorie. She carried a syringer in one hand with the ease of one who was more than familiar with it. Haylen's eyes immediately went to the woman's face, and noticed that she was staring hard at Danse, who didn't seem to notice. Her eyes were working on his face in the way Haylen used to survey Rhys's.

"What could you want with a terminal at this specific station?" he demanded.

"A piece of evidence about a pre-war crime," the woman stated. She was still staring at Danse, who was one of the handsomest men in the entire Brotherhood of Steel but didn't seem to know it.

"If you don't mind, we'd like to consult it, and then we'll be on our way." The woman's male companion, who sounded much older and wearier than she did, now emerged into the light as well, and his face was grey plaskin, torn at one side to reveal wiring and internal mechanisms.

At the sight of him, Danse took a step back, raising his weapon. "That's a synth," he said, his tone of voice accusatory.

The woman's face suddenly fell, and she looked at the synth with an expression of horror, her eyes bugging out. She gasped and her hands flew to her mouth. "My God, _no_! I had no idea."

The synth grimaced. "Very funny. Now can the melodramatics before the guy in the tin suit shoots me."

Her hands came away from her mouth, and she laughed. It was a rich, warm laugh, full of good humor. Then she glared at Danse. "This is Nick Valentine, and in the last five weeks he's kept me from being hurt or killed so often I've lost track. When he isn't keeping me safe, he tracks down missing persons, and practically every time we visit a settlement of any size, someone there comes up to shake his hand and thank him for bringing someone home safe. He has never pretended to be anything other than what he is, and I don't have a better friend. If you will please permit us to consult the terminal, we will leave immediately afterward and you will never have to deal with either of us again."

"I'm not about to compromise our mission by allowing-." Danse began, but Haylen caught at his elbow.

"Sir, permission to speak?"

"What is it?" he snapped.

"The radstorm is still going strong. Leaving a civilian out in it, whatever her views, would be inhumane-and contrary to the mission we were briefed on by Senior Scribe Neriah and Elder Maxon prior to deployment." Haylen tried to point to the syringer with her eyes and prayed Danse would catch on. He was a good CO, a good soldier, and even a good man, but there were times she badly wanted to smack him upside the head.

He frowned. Had she reached him or not? It was hard to tell. "Very well. She can come in. And the dog. The synth stays outside."

"I thank you for my share of the favor, but I'll stay outside. I won't go where my friend isn't welcome," Raina Queen said. Her voice was very firm.

"Don't be ridiculous," the synth told her. "Go on in. You're running low on Rad-X and Rad-away and your health is more important than my pride. You don't have to prove anything to me. I doubt you could prove anything to them no matter how hard you tried."

While they were talking, Haylen whispered to her commanding officer, "Sir, him too."

He glared as if she had lost her mind.

"Trust me! I can explain."

Danse's face twisted with disgust. "Him too-but he has to surrender all his weapons and stay where one of us can see him at all times. And he can't touch any computer terminals. You get ten minutes with the one you came here for, but that's all."

"Gee, you're all heart," the synth remarked. He divested himself of two guns and a set of brass knuckles, plus a cigarette lighter.

Queen looked from her companion to Danse, frowning in thought. Sounds made by still more approaching ghouls seemed to decide her. "Thank you."

Haylen helped Rhys cross the threshold, and didn't drop him even though he snapped both at her and at their not-so-welcome visitors. Once inside the police station, she settled him down where he could watch the synth while Raina Queen went off to use the terminal. Danse wanted to demand an explanation right away, but she jerked her head toward the inner room.

"Now, soldier. What exactly is so important that we have to cater to a civilian who's a synth sympathizer? This had better be good." he demanded once the door was three quarters closed.

"Not so loud," she whispered. "Sir, she has a syringer _and_ a dog, just like Scribe Faris reported. Didn't you see what happened to the ghouls she shot? They died immediately. Of poison. If she's not the botanist we're looking for, she probably knows who it is-or at least she's a strong lead!"

His face cleared. "Good thinking. There's still a functioning cell on the premises. Once she's secured, the synth can be disposed of-."

"No! Don't you remember, sir? We're supposed to recruit them for the Brotherhood, not..." Her good manners deserted her for the moment. "Not piss them off! Elder Maxson specifically said we want whoever it is to sign up willingly, whatever it takes. Locking her up and destroying a synth she perceives as a friend will ruin all chance of that, if she's the botanist. Okay, maybe she's _not_ the one, but that's a risk we can't take. As it is, between you and Rhys, you've already given her the impression that the Brotherhood is full of jerks and bullies."

"And on what do you base these observations, Scribe?" he asked, ice dripping off his words.

"I'm not speaking as a soldier at the moment, sir. I'm speaking as a _woman_. And as a woman, right now you need to...to _woo_ her. From the way she looked at you, she finds you attractive. So you made an unfavorable first impression. You can still fix this."

Now he was looking at her as if she'd lost her mind again. " _Woo_ her? That's beyond what's called for as a member of the Brotherhood."

"Not this time, sir. Whatever it takes, remember? Do you want to go back to the Prydwen and report that you _had_ a lead on the botanist and lost it, or that you're actively involved in recruiting the botanist? Or that you already have them signed up?"

She could practically see the wheels grinding in his head as he thought. Honestly, if you didn't look at the Paladin and the synth called Valentine, if you only spoke to them, you would almost think that Valentine was the human and Danse was the synth. Valentine had more personality and warmth. Haylen hadn't even spoken to Valentine herself, but she'd already noticed that about him.

"...What do I do?" Danse asked.

Haylen breathed an inward sigh of relief and seized one of their canisters of purified water. "First, take off your armor. Then go and apologize to her for being so gruff. Tell her you were upset at the thought that you'd endangered a civilian and offer her the water. Smile at her, too. Nicely, like when you're fraternizing after hours. Apologize to her _and_ the synth-."

"Apologize to a synth?!" Now he looked like he was offered raw radroach for breakfast.

"Yes. Apologize for how you acted, and explain that your experiences with synths up until now have you on your guard. Then..."

* * *

A/N: I had no idea this was going to be Scribe Haylen's chapter until I started working on it from Danse's POV and realized I needed someone who was more empathetic to take the lead. The bit of poetry while they're being attacked is a snippet from Poe's 'The Bells', specifically the verse about ghouls, and the chapter title is a riff on a line from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.

And now for my readers: Crimson Katana, you're thinking like I'm thinking about grenades and anti-personnel charges. Look up the Australian Stinging Bush, aka Gimpi Gimpi or Gympie, aka, the Suicide Bush. Its sting is so painful that after a bad exposure to it, people have to be restrained in a hospital bed so they don't hurt themselves. People _have_ killed themselves just to end the pain. Not as funny as itching powder, but itching powder would be a first line of offense. Just imagine someone getting a terrible itch inside their power armor...

Hyperventi: Thank you! I do so love Nick. He's the best. Of course, so is Hancock, and Curie, and... No, it won't stay on track, but no spoilers now!

Guestman: You have to be one of the most thought provoking reviewers out there, so much so that I find it difficult to reply fully in notes like these. I do hear Raina as I write her, and I hear Nick when I write him, especially the 'sweet, goofy kid' part in that last chapter. I can tell you Raina has an alto sort of voice, and her accent isn't exactly Bostonian or Midatlantic either. Her vault had the overflow of the Concord Library system, culls, duplicates, donated books they didn't need, old holotapes of performances, a real mixed bag without any plan to what went into it. I also have to say that I am frustrated that you aren't writing these ideas out into stories, because your ideas are solid and you have plot and story arc nailed, in my opinion.


	16. Can't See The Forest For The Trees

There was the holotape, still intact even after two hundred odd years….and it had the message on it. Raina slipped it into her pocket and went back to Nick. His guard had nodded off thanks to the medications he was on, which was fine with her, as she found him intensely unlikable. Since she didn't want to rouse the man, she beckoned for Nick to join her on the back stairs, where they sat down. King curled up on her feet, as usual.

"Didya find it?" he asked.

"Got it," She patted the pocket. "Nick, I—." Ever since he had told her how he came to be, the memories of a pre-war cop loaded into an electronic brain housed in a synthetic body, a Frankensteinian combination if ever there was one, she had been trying to come up with a way to explain him to himself.

"What's up?" Yellow eyes, brighter than a cat's, regarded her.

"I may get this wrong. I probably will, because I've never said anything like this to anyone, but…"

She paused a moment before she plunged in. "Fruit trees in the wild, that is, truly in the wild, not trees someone planted a long time ago—they're mostly awful. Their fruit is small, hard, sour, and almost inedible. Cultivated trees like pears, bananas, and apricots—they are what they are because a hybridizer took pollen from a tree with slightly bigger fruit and put it on the flowers of a tree with slightly sweeter fruit, and so on. It took thousands of years to turn a wild banana with more seeds than flesh, a banana that had to be cooked before you could bite into it, into a soft, sweet fruit that was easy to peel."

"Uh—you say things like that all the time," Nick pointed out.

"True," she said. "But there's more. A really good fruit tree is practically a miracle, so when a hybridizer breeds one, then they propagate it by cutting—that is, they cut off branches and root them so they'll grow into trees with fruit exactly like the parent tree. Except that it doesn't always work right, because maybe the original tree only flourishes in a certain kind of soil, or it's prone to root rot, so they take a tougher variety and graft the cutting onto the rootstock of that tree. The rootstock is tough and vigorous, the cutting bears fruit that's better and more abundant, and together they make a better tree than either would be on its own. Nobody can say that tree isn't really a tree, or that its fruit isn't really its fruit.

"And that's you, Nick. You're like a grafted tree. This synth body is the rootstock, and the original Nick Valentine's memory is the cutting. If not for the synth part of you, all of him would be gone and lost, or just so many ones and zeros in a database. If not for his memories, you'd be just…well, whatever a synth becomes when the Institute sees them as things and not people. I have no point of comparison, there.

"You aren't him any more than the grafted tree is the parent tree, but the things that were good about him live on in you. And those things are as rare and worth keeping alive as…the Moorpark apricot. It's probably the best apricot tree ever bred. Anyway, that was what I wanted to say."

He looked at her, and his eye-lights flickered a lot. For a long moment he was silent, then, "Damn …For somebody who says they never say things like that, you sure hit it out of the ballpark."

"That wasn't what I was going for. I just wanted to try and help you find understanding."

"Well, I can tell you that right now, I wouldn't want to be anyone else, anywhere else," he said, and smiled. "You make me glad I am what I am."

His smile made her feel warm. None of her sisters had had a father or a brother, of course: they had to go all the way back to Theodosia herself for that, and Theodosia's personal memories were difficult to pin down. Nick was someone who was there when you needed him, someone who gave you good advice and had your back and worried about your health and wellbeing. Like a father or a brother, at least as she imagined they might be.

"But if I'm a grafted tree, what does that make you? If you don't mind a _sappy_ remark, I'd say you have to be a sugar maple, you're so sweet," the synth quipped.

"Ohhh," she groaned. "That was _terrible_. No, I'm sourdough bread starter. The reason is—."

The sound of a booted foot scraping against the stair silenced her. Looking up, she saw the commanding officer, the big one in the power armor, looming over them, except he wasn't in power armor at the moment. He was still big and broad-shouldered, but he looked much less sure of himself. He had a can of purified water in one hand.

"Uh—hello," he scratched the back of his neck with the hand that wasn't holding the water. "Did you get the info you needed?"

"Yes, thank you. As soon as it's light or as soon as the storm ends, we'll be on our way," she assured him, not bothering to get up. She did not like him, but somehow he made her feel flustered.

"Oh. Well, before that…I wanted to apologize. I think we got off on the wrong foot. I'm Paladin Danse. I'm sorry I shouted at you the way I did when you appeared. I'd been expecting the local militia or someone like them."

"As it happens, I'm part of the local militia, the Minutemen," she told him. "So you got what you were expecting, even if it didn't take the exact form you thought it would."

"You are…? Then this is a double apology. Also, uhhh," He walked down the stairs until he was at a level with their eyes. "I…My experiences with synths up until now have been with Gen 1 and 2s. I've never encountered a synth like you before. I reacted like I would to any other synth. I…want to apologize." It sounded like he had to force the words past his lips, but they made it out into the open air.

Raina looked to Nick. "Apology accepted," the sleuth said. "I've never encountered a synth like me either."

"Thank you," Danse said, before he focused his attention on Raina. "So…" he held out the water, "Peace?"

She glanced at Nick, who gave her a single blink, their code for yes. Two quick blinks was the code for 'no', of course. At her request, they had worked out a system for discreet nonverbal communication. That way, he could help her out in social situations, steering her past potential blunders and out of difficulties.

"Peace," she said, and accepted the water.

"So," Danse took that as an invitation to sit down on the stairs with them, a couple of steps below theirs. "That's a good looking dog. What's his name?"

"King," Raina actually was thirsty, so she popped open the canister and sipped from it.

"King," he repeated, and reached out to pet him. King accepted the attention readily enough, but he didn't get excited about it. "I grew up in the Capitol Wasteland. There were dogs there, but not like him. Yellow, ribs showing like slats, narrow heads… Not that it's important. So, you're with the Minutemen? I guess that means you're a settler, then."

"Didn't the shovel give that away?" she teased him a little. "Yes, I'm a settler. My place is to the northwest of Concord."

"It's relatively safe out that way, isn't it? But it still must be hard, grubbing a living out of the ground."

"Nothing worth doing is easy," she pointed out. "I do all right."

"Still, it's living hand to mouth, isn't it? Have you ever thought of joining up with an established organization? One with real resources, where you wouldn't have to worry about where your next meal is coming from."

"Are you...trying to _recruit_ me?" she asked.

"No! Well, maybe-Sorry. I don't often converse with civilians. Especially not ones like you. Uh. I'm not very good at this," he confessed.

"I can see that, but I'm not very good at this sort of thing either, so it's okay. The answer is, no. I already have quite a lot going on, I don't need to add to it. Also, I have only so many years when I can hope to have a healthy baby, and I want to have a family. Once I have one, I want to be there to raise them. The Brotherhood would find that inconvenient, I'm sure. Besides, I know what I'm supposed to do with my life, and that is to grow things. Do you have a family?"

"No. It's not something I've ever considered. Maybe I will one day, but right now, the Brotherhood is my life." He rubbed the back of his neck again, looking around. His eyes lit on her syringer. "Say, what do you have loaded in your darts, anyway? From what I saw, it's quite effective."

Nick blinked twice. _No, don't tell him_.

All right, she would have to make something up. "I'm not sure. I got them from one of the caravaners. There are two kinds going around, one for game and one for things you aren't going to eat."

"Which caravan?" Danse asked.

"Ummm...Nick, was it the armor dealer, or the girl with the strange name?" Raina looked to her friend.

"Neither," Nick said. "It was one of the traveling doctors."

"That makes sense, but which one?" she asked him.

"I dunno," the detective shrugged. "It's not like I need them. So, what's the Brotherhood of Steel doing in the Commonwealth?"

"That's classified-," Danse began, but then deflated a little. "Reconnaissance, mainly. Our objective was to locate and extract any survivors from the last squad that came here, and to locate certain items of pre-war tech. However, at this point, I've lost several members of my own squad. We're hanging on until reinforcements arrive."

"Just a squad or two? Not planning anything bigger?" Nick pressed.

"If anything more substantial is underway, it would be on a need to know basis. Why do you ask?" Danse transfixed Nick with a sharp and suspicious stare.

"Because the Brotherhood of Steel, as an organization, has a way of descending on a community like a plague of locusts-not that anybody knows what that is, anymore. They go where they please, make an effort at eradicating any nests of supermutants or ferals while killing locals with 'friendly fire', 'requisition' supplies from the locals-by which I mean, they descend on some poor settler and demand he turn over whatever his family's grown, whether for their own use or for trade. Without offering compensation, either. Just like Gunners are basically just better organized, armed and armored raiders, the BoS are better organized, armed and armored Gunners."

Raina looked at Danse, horrified. "Is that true?"

"He's oversimplifying and distorting matters," the soldier said curtly. "I'll thank you not to compare the Brotherhood to those packs of chem addicts and mercenaries. We have a long and honorable history and a tradition of discipline and order. The Brotherhood takes young people with potential and gives them the means to achieve it. There is always the risk of friendly fire-but it isn't greater than the risk of being killed by those same supermutants and ghouls we target."

"Understood," Nick returned, "and if the mutants and ferals were gone for good, it might be worth it. But they're never gone for long, and when they do come back, they're angrier and hungrier."

"But demanding people give up their crops without compensation, that's morally unsupportable," Raina said. "So many people barely get by. One bad growing season, and they'll starve."

"You think I don't understand hunger? Before I joined the Brotherhood, I barely scratched out a living in an area at least as bad as the Commonwealth. I have no idea how the Brotherhood gets its provisions. It's not my job-but I do know that that they would never stoop to what you're describing." He stomped away, only to return a moment later with a massive laser pistol. "Here. In trade for whatever syringes you have with you. This and a hundred fusion cells."

"What? Why do you want my syringes?" Raina asked.

"The Brotherhood could use ammo that can bring down a rampaging ghoul with one shot. I want some to take back. At least that way I'll have salvaged something from this mission."

"But this has to be worth a lot more than a dozen syringes," she said.

"If I'm taking all you have, you'll need protection. Besides, underneath the mods it's a basic model. I'm always tinkering."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nick blink, once, slowly. He thought it would be a good idea? Well, she could always make more syringes.

"Thank you." She took the weapon with as much care as she would a mirelurk egg from its nest. You never knew when it would hatch.

He nodded curtly. "You're welcome-but you might want to think twice about the company you keep."

* * *

A/N: A very bad week. Classes, work, and then my 16 + year old cat died. He'd been ailing for a few months, since late October, so it wasn't like I wasn't prepared, but still. He was nothing but skin and bones by the end, he smelled terrible and I had to put newspaper down all around the box because he wasn't able to aim like he used to, but he still loved being brushed and cuddling and being in my lap. On his last morning, I woke up and he was there, I stroked him for a while and he purred. Then he ate a little before he wanted to go out. So I let him out. He never came back. He went back behind the shed in the yard, where he went when he wanted to hide, and that was where I found him when I came home. We got him when I was in elementary school and he was just four months old then. He was there for so much of my life, and I miss my little guy something awful.

Anyhow: Guestman, I have someone in mind for the Minutemen, but I'm not spilling the beans now. Ah, such wonderful botanical mischief and mayhem! Yes, yes, definitely, and lots. Thank you to all my readers and reviewers. I'm just kind of down right now.


	17. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Far away, in a scrupulously clean, well-lighted place: "Father, Kellogg is here," the Great Man's assistant said, eyeing Kellogg nervously.

"Very good. Send him in," the Director of the Institute replied.

"You can—," the assistant began, but the Institute's headsman cut the woman off.

"I heard." He passed through the door into the Presence.

Father eyed him, his expression making sour lines around his mouth. "Sit down."

"I prefer to stand," Kellogg leaned against the wall, pulled out a Sunlights cigar, and lit it.

"I would prefer that you sat—and that you did not smoke those foul weeds in here," Father glared at him.

"What do you care? You're dying anyway." Kellogg took a deep drag on his stogie and let the smoke out slowly.

"While if not for the Institute, you would be long dead by now. It smells nauseating. Put it out."

"Put on the air filtration system, boy. I was part of the Institute long before I pulled your baby ass out of a freezer, and I'll be here long after you're gone." Kellogg responded.

Father's finger leapt out and stabbed at the environmental controls on his desk, and the filtration unit kicked in. "Will you, now?" he murmured. "Speaking of my origin, would you care to explain this?"

He pushed two documents over his desk in Kellogg's direction. One was a copy of 'Publick Occurances', that joke of a 'newspaper' from Diamond City, and the other was something else. At a glance, it had come from the same place, but it wasn't a newspaper, more of a booklet. It had a big yellow flower on the front cover of it. He looked at the newspaper first.

It was an interview with someone purporting to be from Vault 111, the sole survivor from that vault. Whoever it was, they obviously had been to the vault in question, because as best he could remember, all the details were correct.

He looked up from the paper at Father. "So? It wasn't like we went through all the rooms or all the pods looking for you. We knew exactly where you were, we went there and extracted you. Maybe another chamber had failsafes on their cryopods. How should I know?"

"You reported that there were no survivors. You also disobeyed orders and killed both my parents."

"I also turned the cold back on, so they would be preserved. There's plenty of living cells left in them, if you need more DNA. And what are you implying? That I chose to turn the freezer back on for someone else at random?" Kellogg let the ash from his cigar fall wherever it wanted.

"You tell me."

"All right. I will. Maybe it's possible whoever this is, is from Vault 111, but I doubt it. More likely it's somebody pulling a scam for caps," Kellogg told him.

"I see. Now, this." Father indicated the second document, the booklet.

Kellogg picked it up and read in big letters: ' **Queen of the Commonwealth Seed and Plant Company'**.

Then there was the big yellow flower, which looked hand colored. Below that, printed on a banner, read the motto, 'The Common Wealth of the Commonwealth'. In slightly smaller lettering, it then said, 'Purveyors of Pre-War Strains of Plants and Seeds, Vault-Preserved and Newly-Propagated. Fruits, Vegetables, Herbs and Other Useful Plants. Twenty-Five Percent Discount for Minutemen. Homestead Packages Both Small And Large Available. Ask About Our Consultation Service.'

He opened it up and read the inside front cover, where there was an article explaining where the seeds had come from. Apparently someone with a love of homegrown produce had purchased an assortment of seeds just prior to the War and then took them along with them into their Vault, where they were cryogenically stored until very recently. Rather than hoard these seeds for themselves, the company founder was going into widescale seed production in order to bring them to everyone in the Commonwealth at a reasonable price. Then there were pages and pages of what was being offered for sale.

"I don't know anything about this," he said, tossing it aside.

"You don't think it rather too much of a coincidence?" Father asked. "That someone from Vault 111 should have survived, having been cryogenically frozen, and that dozens of seeds somehow also survived by being cryogenically frozen, and Piper Wright somehow has wind of both before anybody else?"

"What do you want? The survivor's head on a platter and all the seeds collected for the Institute? I can do it."

"As you succeeded so well at University Point," Father pointed out. "We wanted the girl Jacqui _alive_."

Kellogg shrugged. "Accidents happen. She threw herself in front of her father at the wrong moment." He had recovered neither the materials nor the girl from that debacle, and the mission had been a thorough failure all around.

"The answer is, no. We do not want the survivor's head on a platter. We want them alive. Very much alive. If they are not recovered alive, you really don't want to know what will follow. I believe very strongly that this person, whoever they are, is from Vault 111 and lived before the war. Someone uncontaminated mentally by the tumult of factions. Someone who will want to come in from the wilderness. The Institute needs this person-and needs them now, before they pick up any ideas."

"Why? What makes you think they're for real?" Kellogg asked.

"This," Father opened a second copy of the booklet and read, "'These cheerful flowers turn to face the sun throughout the course of the day. This is entirely normal, so do not be alarmed. A field of sunflowers in full bloom is a magnificent sight.' That was written by someone who has seen this. Someone who is thoroughly familiar with these flowers. Someone who knows the people who will be growing them are not that familiar, are not familiar with them at all. All throughout this booklet there are similar examples. My linguistics expert believes this was written by someone with an IQ well within the range of what is considered genius."

"And you want them because…." Kellogg asked.

"Because I am dying. Because there is no one within this facility with the vision or the capacity to lead it once I am gone. Because the departments are fractious, and will push their own agendas without looking at the bigger picture. I read this, and as I read it, I can see glimpse the mind of the one who wrote it. _This_ is my successor. Or will be, if they can be found before they're corrupted."

Kellogg stubbed his cigar out against the wall. "All right, old man. I'll find them. Any idea of where to look?"

"In the booklet, it invites potential buyers to visit the settlement of Sanctuary where they are actively growing these plants. That would be a place to start." Father steepled his fingers, watching Kellogg.

"I'm gone."

Once the door was safely closed behind the killer, Father permitted himself a wintry smile, and quoted, "'Go, tread the path that thou shalt ne'er return. Simple, plain…Kellogg, I do love thee so, that I will shortly send thy soul to Heaven, if Heaven will take the present at our hands.'"

Father had also learned of the syringe darts, and what was in them, and he could put two and two together. It would suit him very well if Kellogg choked on his own blood. In fact, he was counting on it.

* * *

A/N: A very short chapter, but an important one. The quote at the end is from Richard III, only instead of 'Kellogg,', read 'Clarence.'

In my headcanon, Ellie came up with the name of the company during the editing session, and Piper the backstory for the inside cover.

First of all, thank you for your empathy concerning the death of my little guy. Pets never live long enough, no matter how long they live. Maybe in a few weeks I'll stop by the animal shelter and see who wants to go home with me, once I get over the worst of wanting him back.

Now: Guestman, your info concerning the size of the bombs answers so many questions that I had. Good knowledge to have while writing this. Concerning Raina's voice, I was thinking Adele more than Cher, that dark smoky quality. Yes, there was music in the Envirovault. Maybe there'll be a sing along out in Sanctuary some night—Magnolia and the radio stations can't be all the music in the Commonwealth. I think some Revolutionary/Napoleonic war era ballads would go over well there. I understand some mods on Nexus add more songs to the Diamond City station repertoire. May have to look into those if the promised ability comes to console.

The size of the conflict—how about the size of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife? Not so big of itself, but it precipitated WWI.

Ten fanfictions? Eeergh! Post them! Bite the bullet! I will proofread once you're properly signed up.


	18. Of Synths And Men

Conrad Kellogg scowled at the sky above Bunker Hill, despite its azure hue and cloudless expanse. Father had insisted on making things difficult for him by making him take a Courier as his only back-up and assigning X6-88 for that job. Then instead of teleporting straight into Sanctuary, wherever the hell that was, they had to go undercover as guards for a caravan, all because that damn booklet wasn't in circulation yet.

The caravaneer they were supposed to follow around was called Trashcan Carla, and she was late. At the moment, they were hanging around the bar, along with several other prospective guards waiting to be hired on. There were always openings for caravan guards, because lots of guards got killed on the job. On Kellogg's right was a bald guy wearing aviator glasses, sipping on a Nuka-Cola and lying cheerfully and creatively to the bartender about killing three deathclaws with one shot.

Kellogg tuned out the liar, brought out his cigar case and lit a San Francisco Sunlight.

"Smoking is detrimental to your health," X6-88 commented.

"Oh, now is it?" Kellogg said with sarcasm, "Yeah, I'm sure it'll cut me off in my youth before anything else has a chance to kill me. You've convinced me. I'll quit right away."

"It is a matter of complete indifference to me. I offer the information as what I believe is called, 'small talk,'" X6-88 replied.

"Keep it to yourself," Kellogg told him. He was not simply older than Father. He was, in fact, over a hundred years old, but thanks to the cybernetic enhancements installed in him by the Institute, he looked about half his age, somewhere in his mid fifties. A handy little implant in his head augmented his memory capacity and made recall instantaneous, while a pain inhibitor kept him comfortable and a limb actuator made sure he could still move like an athlete. Sometimes, when he stretched, he could hear cables twanging in his arms and legs.

Those were just the major ones. There were a host of smaller pseudo-organs which kept his bodily functions in balance. He could keep on like this indefinitely-not forever young, perhaps, but forever middle aged wasn't bad. As long as he had enough stimpaks, he'd be fine.

But then Conrad Kellogg had never read 'The Picture of Dorian Grey.' Raina, who had, could have told him the problem with thinking you had cheated Death and avoided Time was that they didn't go away. Death and Time were waiting like a pair of collectors for the Mob, and the longer you put off paying what you owed, the worse they were going to be when they finally got hold of you.

Around them, the hubbub of the market area ebbed and flowed. The place was filthy, especially in comparison to the Institute, and it reeked. The people there were the detritus of humanity, and they looked it. He felt his mouth twist into a sneer and was not surprised to see a curl of distaste on X6-88's face as well.

The synth looked ill at ease and uncomfortable in the battered, third hand armor and grimy fatigues he had been given to wear as part of their cover, like a young prince in the sackcloth of a beggar. Or maybe the clothes had bedbugs or lice in them. It wasn't like Kellogg cared.

A Brahmin bellowed, pawing at the ground in its pen, then lifted its tail and let out a cowpat. That was what Bunker Hill was like, when you came right down to it. A great big steaming cowpat. Hell, the whole damn Commonwealth was, too! A great big pile of cowshit.

A woman who looked to be about sixty years old threaded her way through the crowd to the bar She wore a torn and patched denim jacket that was grimy with road dust. "I'm looking for a couple of guards for out to Sanctuary and back."

"Sanctuary? Where the hell is that?" Kellogg snorted. This was all part of the script, prearranged by Father.

"Up north west of Concord," she said. She sounded cranky.

"What are you offering?" X6-88 asked.

"A hundred caps round trip," she said. "No advances, either." It was far too little, and most of the out of work guards lost interest.

"I'll take it," Kellogg said, "I got nothing better going on."

"I'm new. If that won't be a problem, I am available," X6-88 said. Inwardly Kellogg winced. Acting was not in the synth's skill set.

The bald guy who told outrageous lies wasn't put off. "Whoa, that's a stingy offer, but I wanted to head up that way anyhow. There's this girl up there…." He gave a wolf whistle. "What if I only go half the distance, is that worth sixty caps to you?"

"I—only planned for two guards," Carla said, sounding unsettled.

"Aw, come on," the bald guy coaxed. "The usual number is three. Look around." He gestured at the marketplace. It was true. All the caravaneers in sight had three guards.

"I—," Carla glanced at Kellogg, which was not a good move because they were only supposed to have just met. Damn it, why had Father insisted on this meeting place? If they had rendezvoused in the wastelands proper, there wouldn't have been any bald asshats to make this even more difficult.

"I got no objections," he grunted. After all, he could put one through the bald guy's skull any time he liked out there, if he got to be a problem.

"Not sixty," Carla told the guy. "Fifty."

"All right," he said, putting down the empty Nuka bottle. "My name's Parsons, by the way."

"Everybody calls me Trashcan Carla," she told him as they shook hands.

Parsons extended a hand to Kellogg nest. The man sure smiled a lot.

"Post," Kellogg automatically lied as he shook the man's hand. "This is—." He couldn't call X6-88 by the Institute designation, so he said the first thing which came to mind. "Exodus."

"Exodus. What is, that, like, Biblical?" Parsons asked as he shook X6's hand.

"So I am given to believe," X6—no, it was now Exodus, and it would have to get used to it.

"So," Parsons looked at Carla. "When do we roll?"

The walk from Bunker Hill to Sanctuary was about a week at the pace a loaded Brahmin could manage, and six days into it, Parsons was still alive and well. He was useful, for one thing. Not only was he impressively stealthy, he was useful in other ways. He could always find something to kill for dinner, he shared his water when others' canteens were low, and if he did tell tall tales, they were at least entertaining, so somehow the time had never seemed right to take him out. It didn't hurt that having a third man to keep watch at night meant each man got more sleep.

Now, however, they were almost there, and it was about time. Along the way, they had dealt with raiders, radscorpions, Gunners, Supermutants, and packs of ferals. Oh, and a Deathclaw. Exodus no longer looked like he'd had his real clothes stolen and was making do with whatever he could salvage from someone's pile of dirty discards. He looked battered around the edges, not so much the panther-sleek Courier anymore. Even his mirrored sunglasses had a scratch. Not that he was any easier to live with in any other way-that subtle superiority cloaked in synth servility remained. He just seemed more like an asshole with a stick for a spine.

Speaking of whom: "That junkyard does not appear on this map," Exodus commented.

"Junkyard?" Trashcan Carla frowned and squinted toward the area.

"Yeah," Kellogg confirmed. "You want to stop and root through it?" As her nickname suggested, most of her wares were gleanings from rubbish.

"I don't remember there being any junkyard here," she said instead of answering yes or no.

Kellogg eyed the woman. The caravaneer was a smoker, and as they got closer and closer to Sanctuary, she was smoking more and more. If she wasn't nervous, then he didn't know a thing about people. She hadn't been this nervous when they met up at Bunker Hill, so why was she getting anxious now? His instincts told him she knew something she hadn't told.

"What was there?" he prompted.

"A Red Rocket station," she rasped. "But now I remember there were a lot of junked cars and trash around, so I guess this is where they dumped it all."

Kellogg gave the place the once over as they trudged past it. You could hide a lot of things in a junkyard. Perhaps they ought to check it out when they were done in the settlement. He decided it could wait until then.

* * *

"Evil is coming, Mr. Valentine," Mama Murphy told him, grasping his arm with both hands. "Evil. It's coming today. For _her_. You are the only one who will know it by its face. You must be vigilant today."

"Evil, you say?" Nick asked. He had only met Mama Murphy a couple of times, but he had learned not to dismiss her visions as nonsense. "Are we talking human, animal, feral, or what?"

"It comes on two legs," she said after a moment. "Less human than you, but more human too. The false face and false words hide a true heart."

"...that isn't a lot to go on."

"It's what the Sight has told me. If I had me a dose of Jet, now, or Psycho-," Mama coaxed.

"I think I'll make do with what I have, thanks." he told her. That day was going to be a big one: the Minuteman community and several settlers from the area were coming by to help them put up a guesthouse, which it was clear Sanctuary was going to need, what with the people who wanted to see the plants growing and pick up their orders. With so many hands to help, the building was expected to go up quickly, and the rest of the day would be spent socializing and celebrating. There would be music, dancing, food and probably a fair amount of drinking, too. Several of the settlers played musical instruments, such as fiddles, drums, acoustic guitars and harmonicas, and a lot of old music, not just pre-war, but pre-20th century had survived by people simply teaching each other.

So the mood around Sanctuary was happy and excited, and the prospect of evil was one he wanted to banish. Despite Mama's warnings, he joined in the building, as his handyman days around Diamond City made him one of the more skilled builders. It was especially nice to see how many people had come out for this; there had to be nearly fifty people, including kids of all ages from babies in arms to teens who were almost grown. The Finch family had come, all four of them-he and Raina had rescued the younger son, Jake, from the Forged a few weeks before.

Raina and Jonny-say-Quoi were in charge of food preparation. Many settlers had brought something to add to the feast, side dishes and beverages, but the main course was going to be radstag stew with potatoes, carrots and onions among other things, and there would be mutfruit cider to go with. That alone was a novelty, as there was rarely enough mutfruit to spare for pressing and fermenting. By mid afternoon the building was done and everyone had worked up an appetite. Everything that could be used as a table and seating in Sanctuary had been put to good use, and the boards were groaning with the weight of the food.

Preston, as unofficial leader of Sanctuary, thanked everyone for coming and offered a short grace to open the meal, and then they began. Although Nick didn't eat, he took a seat next to Raina anyhow, as meals were as much a social occasion as anything. Besides, he had not forgotten Mama's warning. If anything happened, he was going to be there to protect her.

Despite all the time spent chopping and stirring a cooking pot, Raina had found a moment to clean up and change into a pretty rose colored dress which flattered her skin tone and showed off her figure. Appreciating a lady's figure was academic for Nick the Synth, but old habits from Nick the Human meant that he looked anyway.

"So many people came," she exclaimed with pleasure, "and I have two prospective beekeepers-Mary Abernathy and Jake Finch."

"Mary is the older one, right? The one Preston saved from raiders?" Nick looked down the line of tables.

"Yes. She's recovered from the bullet wound. I think she's here as much because of Preston's handsome face as because she wants to keep bees," Raina confided.

"That'll disappoint Jake Finch, if that's the case. I saw him watching her earlier."

"Huh!" Raina snorted, breaking off a chunk of cornbread as the platter went past. "So my first students _both_ have ulterior motives. Oh, well, as long as they're prepared to learn. I told them to come back in three weeks, which should be enough time to start planting the super ginkos."

"I, ah, was, kinda hoping you'd forgotten about that," he grimaced.

"Not a chance, not with five thousand of them hardened up and ready to go in the ground."

"Hardened up?" he asked. "Sounds a bit suggestive to me."

"It just means they've been exposed to the weather so they won't suffer shock when they're planted." She flicked a crumb at him. "However, I have considered what you said about the Glowing Sea. I don't necessarily need to go there myself. Jonny-say-Quoi and I have discussed it and he believes that he can lead a team made up entirely of bots, if we can recruit the bots. Have you heard of Grey Gardens? It's a farm staffed entirely by robots, and then there's the General Atomics Galleria. There are dozens of Mr. Handys and Mr. Gutsys there who have been following the same routines for two hundred years. I thought if you and went to these places and talked to the supervisors, perhaps they would agree to help."

"I'm all for anything that keeps you out of the Sea," he agreed with the sincerest feeling of gratitude.

"I'm also going to keep back a quarter of the trees to plant around the Commonwealth in other areas. I could give each family that came today a group to take home, a male and three females."

"Sounds like a good idea. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that trees have different sexes. I mean, how can you tell? It's not like checking under a kitten's tail," he smiled, but then he saw what was coming up the street. Trashcan Carla was a familiar sight in Sanctuary, but she had never brought guards with her before. One of the guards was a tall man, bald, with a long, thick scar down his face. Nick's vague memories of his time in the Institute stirred and gave up a name to go with that face. Kellogg. The Institute's bully boy, their hired killer. This was the evil Mama Murphy meant. The Institute had come for Raina, and unless Kellogg could be contained, there would be a bloodbath. All these settlers, all the children-. But Kellogg was checking out the gathering, and he didn't look like he knew who he was looking for.

"You take a slice of leaf and look at the cell nuclei," she replied. "If-Nick, what's wrong?"

His answer took a moment to come to mind. "Plenty. First of all, do you have anything like a Mickey you could slip into someone's food or drink? Something that'll knock them out, or at least put them down for the count somehow, for a while. Something that won't look like an attack. Non-lethal, too. We're going to want to question these people later."

"Yes, several things."

"Good. Go get some of them. Then..."

TBC...

A/N: A little later in coming, but a chapter which sets up the next. 'Parsons', if you hadn't guessed, is actually Deacon. Brace yourselves for what's going to come. Thank you all for reading, reviewing, and following!


	19. A False, Deluding Young Man

A week's hike through the Commonwealth in the company of Kellogg and an Institute Courser was the ultimate Road Trip from Hell, at least in Deacon's opinion. When he first spotted the Courser, he immediately thought _'Oh,_ ** _hell_** _no, they've rumbled Old Man Stockton_.' The thought was accompanied by a stab of panic. When he realized who the Courser was with, his reaction was, ' _Shit, are they going to take out all of Bunker Hill_?' The stab of panic turned into something like the little get-together Brutus and friends had organized for Caesar on the Ides of March.

However, then the old trader lady showed up, and rather than start a bloodbath, Kellogg and the Courser had signed as guards for a trip into the middle of nowhere. What the….?

Although Deacon had no idea what was going down, he knew one thing: he had to go along and find out. So using his incredible powers of charm and charisma, he persuaded Carla to hire him too. Almost a week had gone by, and he _still_ didn't know what was going on.

Now they had reached their destination, or what he assumed was their destination, the settlement of Sanctuary. Deacon had once lived in a place rather like this, back when Barbara was alive. University Point, where Kellogg had gone to find something and had instead left everyone dead. But here they were doing something he had never seen at University Point or anywhere else: they were having a community party, with a feast and what looked to be a dance floor for afterwards.

Nobody was heavily armed, although there was some serious artillery on the turrets, something like Mk. 4 or thereabouts. That wasn't bad, it was enough to protect a community against threats like raiders or ferals, but against Kellogg and a Courser? Those two would chew up Mk. 4s and spit out the bits.

Glancing at the tables, Deacon recognized Preston Garvey, the last of the old Minutemen and the first of the new—and then he saw Nick Valentine, seated next to a young woman he'd seen several times. Raina Queen. She wasn't a beauty, but there was something very appealing about her.

She had turned up just as Piper was pounding on the gates to Diamond City—and then a day and a half later, she was in Goodneighbor, trading with Daisy and acting like ghouls were no different than anyone else. And Raina Queen was good friends with Valentine, the only synth brave enough to live openly. Somebody worth watching, in other words.

Well, he had told Kellogg he wanted to go to Sanctuary on account of a girl. Raina Queen was a girl and if anyone here was prepared to help take on Kellogg and a Courser, it would be Nick Valentine. "There she is," he said, and flashed his scary ass companions one of his best smiles. "Wish me luck."

However, even as he started toward her, she got up and approached the newcomers. "Carla! It's good to see you again. And you have guards now? That's smart. Welcome to Sanctuary. Please, take a seat and join in, all of you. Let me tell Jonny to get you some cider…"

There weren't any empty seats until a few settlers got up and invited the newcomers to sit, they were done and they were going to start the music now anyhow.

Deacon went for the seat by Valentine, far enough away from Kellogg's and the Courser's seats for a degree of comfort. "Mr. Valentine, I know you don't know me," he began, but the synth interrupted him.

"Know you? No, but I've certainly seen you around. Sometimes you're Diamond City security, sometimes a drifter hanging around Goodneighbor, and maybe once or twice I've seen you around Bunker Hill." Valentine tapped his temple. "People tend to remember the outward details, like clothes and hair. Facial recognition software tracks people by the things that ain't so easy to change. Which is not to say you don't make it a challenge. You're quite the quick change artist."

"Thanks." Okay, if he was getting recognized, he had to stop putting off his next facial surgery. "Oh, thanks!" The second thanks was to the Mr. Handy who gave him a bowl of stew. Deacon inhaled a heady mix of something that smelled even better than Salisbury steak, but first things first.

"I dunno why you're here, but did you see the two guys I came here with? They're like, seriously bad people. I don't know _why_ they came all the way out here, but I know it wasn't to join in the square dancing."

" _Both_ of them, you say?" The detective regarded him with special interest. "Let's say I have an inkling, and measures are already being taken against one of them. The elder, to be specific. It won't be any trouble to add the other one to the mix. Now I suggest you eat up before it gets cold, and enjoy the music."

The settlers who had left the table were setting up along one side of the dance floor, doing the twiddly things musicians did when they tuned up, and soon they were picking out a sprightly tune.

In the meantime, Deacon was eating stew, because he really was hungry. He recognized radstag and carrots, but the rest of it was a mystery and he didn't care one bit. It was that good. Of course the girl returned when his mouth was full. It always seemed to work out that way.

She raised an eyebrow when she found him in her seat, and Valentine got up. "You can have my spot. This is…I don't think I caught your name, pal."

"Deacon," he replied, hastily rising. "It's Deacon."

"Raina, this is Deacon. Deacon, Raina. If you'll excuse me, I've got to see a bot about a man," Nick touched his hat in farewell and left them.

Raina smiled at him, and gamely said, "I'm so glad Carla has guards now. When I first met her, some raiders were giving her a hard time." Up close, she made an even better impression. Nice skin, pretty near perfect teeth, warm smile… Where did this woman come from, and were there any more like her at home?

He shook himself mentally. "Raiders? Yeah, we ran into some of them. Plus a lot more. Let tell you the time I took out three Deathclaws with one shot..."

* * *

Meanwhile, X6-88 was not enjoying himself at all.

Besides being full of insanitary meat cut from a wild animal, the stew itself was an assault on the senses-too colorful, too flavorful. At least a dozen different flavorings and foodstuffs of unknown origin had gone into it, and he wanted to gag after only a few spoonfuls. He would much have preferred a safe, nutritionally balanced food packet from the Institute's cafeteria.

Then there were the people. Everywhere they had been over the last week, it had been the same. Miserable, wretched creatures whose lives were almost as brief as soap bubbles, living out those lives in squalor, poverty and dirt. Everywhere, despair amid decay, the way of the world after the War. Thank Father he was a synth from the Institute, and not one of these degenerates.

Everywhere except here there was despair. In Sanctuary, there was a undercurrent, a _leitmotif_ of excitement, of optimism. Here people smiled more, chatted and laughed. Next to him sat a woman with an infant in her arms, the second infant he had ever seen in his life. It was only slightly less grotesque and disturbing than the first time. She smiled at him and said, "You're not eating? It's all right, nobody's going to come asking you for caps."

"It's too rich for me," he replied, and went on to lie, "I have a weak stomach."

"That's too bad," she sympathized. "At least have some of the mutfruit cider, it's barely fermented at all, just enough to kill the bugs."

"Thank you." He drank, if only to blend in. It was mild in flavor, and thus easier to get down than the stew, although it was a little sweeter than he expected. "Very pleasant," he commented.

The woman nodded. "It's made from _our_ mutfruit. See, a few months back, when I had this one here," she bounced the baby a little, "I was in a bad way, and my milk wasn't coming in like it should, so the baby was poorly too. Ms. Raina came every two or three days with nettle tea and chicken soup for me, till I was better. This little man pulled through too, as you can see, so we named him Joshua Rainer. Since then we've been part of the Minutemen."

"How nice. Who is Ms. Raina?" he asked, because she said it as though whoever it was, was someone prominent. He was a far better killer than he was a conversationalist, but he knew the rudiments of socializing.

"You don't know? Raina Queen, the founder of Queen of the Commonwealth Seed and Plant Company?" That was the man on his other side.

"You mean the one who brought the seeds out of the Vault with her?" X6-88 fervently hoped the answer was yes. Then he could immediately transfer back to the Institute with her while Kellogg secured the materials. Anything to get away from this festering cesspit and end the prolonged ordeal the past week had been.

"Uh-huh."

"She is here tonight? Which one is she?" X6 looked around at the gathering. Logically, the person they were looking for would stand out from the rabble.

"Yes...don't see her right now, though."

"I would like to meet her," he said.

"Stick around, then. I'm sure she'll come back."

As a Courser, he had been trained and schooled in the arts of assassination, pursuit and recovery. It had been impressed on him to never let his guard down. But while he was a synth, he was also engineered from human DNA, and it is not possible, physically or mentally, to keep on a state of full emergency alert 24/7. No matter how stressful and dangerous a situation, gradually it becomes the new normal, and so the organism adapts and relaxes. The settlers were clearly no threat to him physically nor were they sufficiently armed, and they were behaving like the mindless sheep they were. So he relaxed, and drank his cider, while around him the musicians began to play. But threats can come from all directions, and take the most unexpected forms.

* * *

Kellogg was not as disgusted by the stew as X6 was. He was a man who appreciated sensual pleasures, like a Sunlight cigar or a bottle of Gwinnett stout, and the stew was as hearty and flavorful as anything he had ever eaten. He thought the cider was weaker than piss, but he drank it anyway. The musicians opened with a song he remembered from a long, long time ago, 'Lilibulero'. This settlement was unexpectedly well off, what with two Mr. Handys, the fields and the feast.

Halfway through his second mug of cider, he saw Carla trying to slip away, so he went after her, caught up with her before she could get to her Brahmin.

"Where do you think you're going?" he asked.

"The privy," she snapped. "What's it to you?"

"I think you're going the wrong way, then."

She scoffed. "What do _you_ know about this place? Even if I was leaving, the deal was that I lead you here and then I would be free to go."

"Yeah," he said. "You're free to go. Heaven or hell, it makes no difference to me."

The blade he stabbed her with was more like an ice pick than anything else, mostly point and very little blade. It had been designed to leave a minimal hole in the flesh and cause minimal bleeding, and so her dying scream was more of a startled yelp. In any case, it was drowned out by the music. He left her in the gap between some bushes and a fence, and returned to the gathering. The Mr. Handy offered him a second bowl of stew, and he accepted. This bowl seemed greasier than the last, probably because no one had stirred it this time. No matter; the grease added depth, and... a hint of fruit?

A young woman in a pink dress was being urged to join the singing, and after a little teasing, she stood up. The musicians began another old tune, one he knew as 'Green Willow' The chorus began 'All around my hat, I will wear the green willow', and went on from there. The young woman sang the verses, and the rest joined her for the refrains.

Some of the lyrics were different than the ones he remembered, though 'Fare thee well, old winter, and fare thee well, cold frost. Nothing have I gained, but my own true love I've lost.' The girl had a decent enough voice, he allowed. She wasn't screechy and she didn't try to hit notes nature never intended her to reach. Although she was nothing like as good as a pre-war singer, what she lacked in polish, she made up for in feeling. 'He's a false, deluding young man. Let him go, farewell he!'

When the song was over, there was a lot of applause, and a few shouts of "Raina!", which had to be her name. He saw that X6 was trying to get his attention. When they made eye contact, the synth jerked his head toward the young woman with a special significance.

'Her?' Kellogg mouthed. X6-88 nodded. All right, it was time to act. He stood up, began to circle around toward the back...and then the pain and cramps hit him. It felt like a Supermutant Behemoth had gripped his stomach and was trying to squeeze its contents out through his intestines like someone squeezing toothpaste out of a nearly empty tube. He made a break for the nearest privy, and only just made it.

* * *

A/N: This chapter would not come together for the longest time, and might not exist if not for Guestman, who talked me through what had to go down and brought it into focus. This is for him, with my thanks. The song Raina joins in on is 'All Around My Hat', by Steeleye Span. 'Lilibulero' is a traditional march/dance tune, and both can be found on Youtube.


	20. Bagpipes?

"Luckily I had my bagpipes with me, so—," Deacon lied happily, but Des had that look on her face, the one that said her tolerance for 'creative conversation' was wearing thin.

"Deacon," she sighed.

"What, you don't believe me? Okay, okay. When it all went down, it went down like it was _timed_. Dominos falling over, you know? I was enjoying the music, but that didn't mean I wasn't keeping an eye on Kellogg or the Courser, the guy I knew then as Exodus. I noticed when Kellogg got up and left the celebration, but since the synth wasn't moving, I figured the guy just had to take a leak. I mean, who doesn't, now and then? He came back a few minutes later, casual as anything, and he had a second bowl of stew while Raina sang. So did I, but _his_ had a little something extra in it…"

Just as the number ended, Kellogg got up hastily and legged it in the direction of the latrines, moving like somebody who was about to paint the town brown. At almost the same time, the Courser was turning greenish around the edges. He'd looked faintly disgusted when he sat down, but then he always looked like that. After his second cider, he looked like he was going to gag, and that wasn't like him, but then he hadn't had to rub elbows with strangers until then.

When the mom with the baby sitting next to him started breastfeeding right there in front of everybody, Deacon wanted to smirk, because the synth looked like he was ready to hurl.

Then he really did hurl. 'Exodus' leapt up, nearly falling in the process, and barely got clear of the table before he heaved his guts up. The people near him had things to say about that, and Deacon overheard some of their remarks, like 'Well, he said he had a weak stomach,' 'Poor lad,' and 'How do you get puking drunk on just two pints of cider?'

Suddenly, Nick Valentine was there, hauling Exodus up to his feet. "C'mon, kid. Let's get you cleaned up and find someplace where you can sleep it off. Just don't do an encore on my trench coat, okay?" Exodus looked up at him without his glasses, puke dripping off his chin, and tried to say something. Without his mirrored shades, he looked very young.

Then he bent over and heaved again. Nick leaned away to avoid getting splattered, and frog-marched the Courser away somewhere.

Right then, Carla staggered up to the tables, holding her side where a bloodstain spread out like a gory Rorschach blot. "Stabbed me," she whispered. "Rotten motherfucking son of a bitch. Didn't know the padding was ballistic fiber."

"Carla!" Everybody was freaking out, but Raina leapt to help the old trader lady. "What happened? Who did it?"

"Guard," The old woman managed to gasp out. "My…guard."

"Which one?" Preston Garvey asked as he stood up, a frown like a thundercloud gathering on his face.

"It can't be him," Raina nodded in Deacon's direction. "He never left the table." That was really nice of her, and his estimation of her went up again.

This moment called for a bullshit artist, and he was the best. He seized the cue and the moment. "It had to have been Post. Exodus is just a kid, and he wanted the job so's he could break in. He _never_ did this. Oh, man, I knew Post wasn't happy with the pay, but for him to do something like _this_?"

"The big one with the scar, then," Garvey said. "Sturges, can you help? Did anybody see which way he went?"

"He was headed toward the latrines," someone offered. "He was in a real hurry, too, like he was going to be sick or something."

"I think that's where Nick was going with the young one," Raina said. "Here, Carla, I'll patch you up. This way. Don't try to talk. Just hang in there. I've got stimpaks and blood packs."

"Let me help," Deacon crossed the distance between them. "Both of them were hitting the bottle earlier, so I'm not surprised they got sick. I mean, cider on top of whiskey isn't going to be a good combo. I feel sick just thinking about it."

"All right," Garvey raised his voice. "Folks, it's a shame this happened, but it looks to be a private dispute that went bloody. We'll deal with it, and there's no reason to let it spoil today for everyone. Please go back to enjoying yourselves, and we'll let you know what's going on when we get back." Then he turned and called out, "Valentine, can you hear me?"

"Yeah, I heard all of it," the raspy-voiced synth yelled back. "I've got the kid in one outhouse heaving up everything he ate for the past week and what's his name in the one next to it, even sicker. I've got a gun on them, but I don't think I'll be needing it—not right away, anyhow. You, uh, might wanna fill in the holes and burn down the outhouses when they're done, though. Nobody's gonna want to use them after this."

The humor did the trick, turning the crowd from nervous verging on scared back to a celebration again. "Codsworth, could you and Jonny start serving the honey cakes?" Raina asked the hovering Mr. Handy. "I'll be back as soon as possible."

"Of course. Anything to help, ma'am." The bot went off in the direction of the food serving areas.

Raina turned back to him as they stood supporting Carla. "This way," she said, pointing with her chin.

"Anywhere you say," he told her, and together they got Carla to a prewar house which had been patched up pretty well. "Your place?" he asked.

"No, Codsworth's. Or it was his family's, back before the war. He lets us use it as an infirmary since he requested a reset," Raina explained. She took Carla into a room and slid a curtain across the doorway, separating him from the two of them.

The next few minutes were taken up with sounds like grunts of pain, the hiss of a stimpak and short conversations about where it hurt. From outside he heard Garvey say, "No, take them down to the creek. If you clean them off under the pump it'll seep down and contaminate the well water. There should be a couple of old blankets or something they can cover up with. And see if you can find some buckets."

About the same time that Raina pulled back the curtain, Valentine, Garvey and a third man, the Sturges who got up when the Minuteman asked for help, were escorting Kellogg and Exodus into the house under armed guard. It hardly looked necessary, as Kellogg was bent over, holding his midsection and looking like he was going to break while Exodus was ashen and wobbly. Both were wearing old blankets, Kellogg from the waist down and the Courser around his shoulders.

Ill as he was and without his mirrored sunglasses, Exodus looked very different from the impassive, inhuman and inhumane pursuit machine Deacon had spotted at Bunker Hill a week before. He looked much younger. About the same age Deacon had been when he was still running with the UP Deathclaws, in fact, which was young enough to be a real idiot and do terrible things without considering what they meant, or what they were turning him into.

"I gotta ask, Raina. What was it they took, exactly, and how much?" Valentine asked.

"Castor oil blended with fig syrup in the stew—it's a treatment for constipation. The castor oil provides immediate relief while the figs make it taste better and work longer. The usual dose is five milliliters, or about a teaspoonful, and I tell people not to go too far away from their privies or wear clothes they can't take off in a hurry after they take it.

"I think he," she indicated Kellogg, "got about ten milliliters in the first bowl and about forty or fifty in the second. He'll be sick all night. Then there was ipecacuanha syrup in the cider, because the cider would mask the bitter aftertaste. It induces vomiting at high dosages. At lower dosages, it's good for amoebic dysentery and certain cases of cough. Most medicines are poisons and vice versa—it's all a matter of dosage."

She looked at the two sick men, assessing their condition. "I might have overdone it, but you said you wanted them incapacitated and not lethally." Kellogg looked like he was going to say something, but he doubled over and groaned instead.

Deacon whistled. "Remind me never to get you mad at me."

"Would somebody mind telling me what the hell is going on?" Preston Garvey asked.

"I can provide at least half the answer," Valentine said. "That's Kellogg. He's the Institute's hired gun. I don't remember much about the place, but I remember him, so I asked Raina for something to take him down but leave him able to answer questions. Then this guy," He pointed at Deacon, "volunteered the information that both of them were trouble. I took his word for it, and gave Codsworth the medicines."

"I can tell you the rest," Deacon jumped in. This was not the time for lies. "You're right, that's Kellogg, and there's no telling how many people he's killed over the years. _This_ guy is a Courser, a synth who hunts down and either recovers or kills runaway synths." Valentine tensed up at those words, which was only natural, but so did Sturges. Deacon looked at him with increased interest. Was Sturges possibly an escaped synth, or did he simply know one?

I—I'm with the Railroad. I spotted them back at Bunker Hill. Whatever they were up to, I knew it couldn't be good, so I signed on with their caravan."

Carla appeared at the door. "I didn't rat you out. I—." she paused for breath. "—didn't have a choice. They took in my grandson, to grow up like he was one of their own. He's a bright kid. Too smart to waste his brain sorting through garbage like me. In return, I agreed to keep an eye out for escaped synths. Not to turn in humans."

"Who were they looking for?" Preston asked, but even as he said the words, it was dawning on him. Raina, who spoke of medicines and cures and poisons he'd never heard of. Raina, who had better skin and teeth than anyone had a right to in the Wastelands.

"It's you, isn't it? They're looking for you. But why?"

"I was a Vault Dweller, from an Envirovault, and I have access to seeds, plants and knowledge they don't," she explained.

"It was only a matter of time before they caught on," Garvey said. "We were figuring it would happen sooner or later."

"Right," Valentine agreed. "Okay, let's secure these two, and then talk about what has to be done. Bring the buckets and the shackles."

* * *

A/N: Regarding the last chapter: Yes, 'nothing like as good as' is indeed proper English. Please consult the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary for further details. You'd use it when you want to say something like, 'These cookies are a lot worse than my mom's,' except you don't want to imply that your mother's cookies are bad and these are even worse. It's an old fashioned phrase, and since Kellogg is over a hundred, I used it to imply his age.

Because people don't always speak or think in proper English, writers are allowed some leeway in writing characters' dialog and thoughts for the sake of authenticity. For example, Anita Loos' Gentleman Prefer Blondes is written from the first person point of view of the main character, Lorelei Lee, who is only semiliterate, and the grammar and spelling reflect that. I quote exactly as it it written, 'Kissing your hand may make you feel very very good but a diamond and safire bracelet lasts forever.' (sic) It's the basis for the Marilyn Monroe movie of the same title. (I am going for my MA in Education. Sometimes it leaks out.)


	21. Temptation

Deacon wasn't simply a liar; he was a master of the art, capable of weaving elaborate tapestries of aggrandization, where the weft was truth and the warp was….warped truth. However far he strayed from the Platonic ideal form of reality, he always tied it up nicely and the result was as iron clad as the story about Washington and the cherry tree. After all, a lie was a kind of myth, and myths were ways of passing on important truths in a form people could understand. So lies were, in fact, the truth, if you looked at it the right way.

A crowd of Railroad agents had gathered around to hear him unfold his tale, but now Dr. Carrington was shaking his head. "Utter nonsense. That young woman did not save the old peddler's life in a four hour long session of open heart surgery performed with only a kitchen knife."

"All right, maybe it wasn't open heart surgery, but if you don't believe that, how are you going to believe the part about the brain surgery later on?" Deacon asked, "Anyhow, she did patch the old lady up and gave her Med-X for the pain and to make her sleep. By that time, Garvey and Sturges had come back with shackles, manacles and buckets for Kellogg and X6, the Courier."

"Why did they have shackles and manacles on hand in the first place?," Des asked.

"They told me the restraints were for raiders who got taken alive. The Minutemen are experimenting with making the bad guys work for the settlers they injured until their debts are paid off. It's gotta be better than killing them, right? The buckets were for any more bodily fluids. Or bodily solids. There were some of both. Then the two of them, Garvey and Sturges, that is, went back out while Raina cleaned up from administering first aid. We'd agreed that there had to be at least two guards on Kellogg and X6 at all times, and Valentine volunteered to be one of them, as he didn't need to eat or sleep. I was the other. The first other, I should say…."

As conversations went, it was one of the most intense and remarkable Deacon had ever witnessed.

* * *

Raina was putting the bloodstained clothing into a laundry bag when Kellogg lifted his head. His color was not good, but there was a curl to his lips and a jut to his jaw that said he wasn't done yet.

Kellogg knew he wasn't going anywhere soon. They'd taken his boots and his pants, not to mention all his weapons and his stimpaks. He was shackled and manacled with enough metal to slow down a charging deathclaw, and they'd stuck him on a chair with the seat cut out and a bucket under it. He needed the bucket, although he was damned if he knew why, because surely everything in his digestive system had already been shit out. However, the cramps hadn't stopped yet and there was still a thin dribble coming out of him. At least the pain inhibitor had kicked in and it didn't hurt so damn much. He felt weak and chilled, between the diarrhea and that damn freezing creek water they'd dunked him in.

So it was just as well he wasn't going anywhere soon. He eyed the girl, the one they'd been sent there to find. She was cleaning up after saving the old lady's life. It rankled that he'd screwed that one up. Overconfidence on his part—he'd do a better job next time.

Meanwhile… If he couldn't complete the mission right now, he could still work on it. It was a matter of psychology. He was willing to believe the story compounded from the newspaper and the seed catalog, because she was too well-fed, too fresh looking, and too knowledgeable—but more than that, she didn't have the air of hopelessness and desperation which set in on Topsiders and Vault-Dwellers alike when they realized what the world had in store for them—which was nothing.

"It's Raina, right?" He had to repeat himself when the first effort came out as less than a whisper. "We came here to rescue you."

That made her stop for a moment. "I wasn't aware I needed rescuing," she said.

He laughed, a harsh, dry sound. "You are. You just don't know it. You're wasted here, brewing up herbs, curing these little people of their ailments, cooking their dinners—peddling seeds across the Commonwealth. You don't belong here. You really want to spend the rest of your life wiping their noses and their asses for them? It's ridiculous—when you could be living and working where it's safe, doing real good. Think about it. Clean water, clean food, clean, comfortable chambers with a clean bed, instead of dirt everywhere."

"I like dirt," she said. "Couldn't get by without it, in fact. At least half of my life is spent in dirt, one way or another. Try again."

"Tell me, Kellogg. Why does the Institute want to rescue her rather than kill her? What game are they playing?" That was Parsons speaking, or the guy he'd known as Parsons, anyway, the one who said he was actually Railroad. Kellogg had missed his actual name.

"Game?" Kellogg asked. "No game. They want to recruit her. In a few years—maybe even only a few months, she could be head of a department."

The girl, Parsons, and the beat up old synth all started in surprise, looking at each other.

"Head of a department?" she pointed to herself. "No, let's cut to the chase. Recruit me? You said, 'doing real good.' Name me three good things the Institute has done for the general population of the Commonwealth, and I'll consider joining it. I don't say I _will_ join, I merely say I'll consider it seriously. I'll even give you the first one for free: Nick Valentine."

"Hey!" came from the battered old Gen 2.5 synth in the corner, the one with the gun.

"Well, you are," the young woman argued.

It was good that she had identified the synth, because otherwise Kellogg would have had no idea what or who she was talking about. Now that he knew, Kellogg racked his brain, recalling what he knew about that series. "He's a leftover from that failed program, what was it? They were trying for immortality, yeah. Uploading their minds into synth bodies at death, but nobody wanted…wanted to go first. So they used old scans from back before the War. Right." He nodded, remembering.

"Why was the program considered a failure?" Raina asked, drawing closer and regarding him suspiciously.

"An unacceptable failure rate." Rather than holding out the information for some advantage, he was deliberately feeding it to her, because the old synth clearly meant something to her. "I think they tried a first run of a hundred. Some never woke up, others couldn't cope with having human memories but being a synth all the same. So they scrapped them all. End of story."

"So they scrapped the successes as well as the failures?" the young woman asked. "That in itself explains a lot about the Institute."

"You could take it along with you, when you join," Kellogg coaxed. "I'm sure they'd repair it, since it seems to mean a lot to you. Hell, they could even transfer its brain into a Gen 3 body, once you couldn't tell from human without taking it apart."

"I refuse to go along with that under _any_ circumstances," the synth protested. "I don't care what those circumstances are, Raina. If I get blown to bits and I wake up in a new body in that place, I'm gonna walk out on you and into the nearest blast furnace. That's a _promise_."

"Don't worry, Nick," the girl said. "If it comes to that I'd probably be dead too."

"That's the last thing I'd want," the synth said, "right after going back there and becoming beholden to them for a new body."

"We'll have to hope it never comes to that. So, Kellogg. Name me two other good things the Institute's done." She challenged him.

"Fed the people," Kellogg replied. "They developed tatos, mutfruits and razorgrain, the backbone of people's diet today."

Her face lit up with anger. "I don't know about the tato, but they did _not_ develop mutfruit or razorgrain. That is a lie on someone's part. Yours or someone else's, and I have documentary evidence that will prove it."

"You do?" Kellogg asked.

"Yes. My family developed mutfruit and razorgrain. I can name every plant which contributed DNA to their genome. You don't get credit for that answer, Mr. Kellogg."

"Wait—your family?" Kellogg asked. "Damn, you aren't from Vault 111 after all, are you? I knew it. So where the hell are you from?"

"From a vault without a number," she said. "A Vault that fell off the radar, where we curated the past and prepared for the future. Well, the future is now, and I have work to do."

"Does your Vault have an Overseer?" he seized on that. This girl was too young, too idealistic. The Overseer might be a better fit for the Institute.

"I suppose that would be me, since I'm the only one left. I'll be honest with you. If I'd encountered you when I was fresh out of the Vault, you probably would have convinced me. If I had never seen what the Commonwealth was like for myself, if I hadn't met people and collected differing opinions and points of view, maybe I'd have been taken in. Maybe, because I was naive and had no one to guide me. Now I cannot envision any circumstances under which I would consent to join the Institute. That's all."

"That's your answer, is it?" he prodded.

"Yes."

Kellogg found it in him to laugh. "Good. Don't change your mind."

"What? Why not?"

"Because I only _work_ for the Institute. What I've seen over the years—fuck them. Loyalty to the Institute and forty caps will get you a can of purified water. So will the forty caps on their own. You hold out to the very last inch and then tell'm no. I'd love to see the Old Man die disappointed."

"The 'Old Man'?" asked 'Parsons'. "You mean, the Director of the Institute? He's _dying_?"

* * *

A/N: Happy Easter, if you celebrate it. Sorry for the lateness, since I try to update at least once a week and this is closer to two. Whenever I get into a chapter from the wrong POV, it seems to stall it until I work out whose it should really be. The business about achieving immortality by having one's mind uploaded into a synth body is my headcanon for why Nick exists.


	22. Crunching Numbers

A/N: BTW, the Railroad is still at the Switchboard and not yet in the crypts of the Old North Church. The massacre by synth 1 and 2s has not yet happened.

* * *

"Deacon," Desdemona's hands and voice both shook as she tried to light her cigarette, her fingers fumbling with the trigger, "if this is just more of your bullshit, then this time you've gone too far."

"On my late wife's soul, Des, this is for real," he told her.

"The Institute's director, dying," Drummer Boy shook his head. "I know they'll pick another one, but how long has he been the director? Thirty years? Thirty five?"

"Nobody really knows," Deacon said.

"The Gen Threes say they all call him 'Father' in there, humans as well as synths. Anyhow, he's been the guiding hand behind all their policies for a lifetime. When he goes, who knows what will happen?" Desdemona drew on her cigarette, making the coal at its tip flare bright.

"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," Deacon quoted. "It's going to be a huge shakeup, however it plays out. Anyway, after Kellogg dropped that bombshell on us, things quieted down for a few hours. In terms of events, I mean, because man, do they know how to party up that way! Seven _different_ polkas—but that has nothing to do with Kellogg or X6 and what happened to them.

"Most of the people left after the music, but some spent the night in the new guest house. Meanwhile, Sturges, Valentine, Garvey and I were taking turns watching Kellogg and the Courser, two at a time. You'll remember that Sturges was the one who got the funny look when I told them 'Exodus' was a Courser.

"Raina had gone home; she lived just a little out of town. As it happened, I was asleep in the next room when the Courser decided to do something really stupid. He tried to use Sturges' recall code on him…"

* * *

Deacon was having a truly horrible dream in which he found Barbara alive and well, only she didn't recognize him because of all the face changes he'd gone through. Even he didn't remember what he looked like. So he was peeling off his faces, one at a time, like sheets from a pad of paper, paper which caught fire and flared up in an instant before turning to into ash and blowing away. It was painless and bloodless, which was okay, but then she cried out, ' _Stop, stop, that's it. That's you_!' Except her warning came a little too late. He'd already peeled that face away and it was gone and lost. He tried to reach out to Barbara, but she had already turned away. ' _I don't know you, You're not the man I married_ ,' she said.

It wasn't the thunk of a wrench meeting a skull that woke him, it was Valentine shouting, "Hey, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

Deacon had had to wake up in a hurry before, his life sometimes depended on being able to rebound out of dreams and into full alert mode, but even so he wasn't quite prepared for what was in the next room: the Sanctuary handyman-mechanic, Sturges, standing over the Courser with a wrench in his hand, the Courser bleeding from the scalp, sprawled out on the floor. In the lantern light, the blood was dark as old oil, and the smell of it mixed nauseatingly with the traces of vomit and diarrhea which hung in the air.

"He was going to wipe my mind," Sturges explained, his voice hoarse.

"So you _are_ a synth," Deacon said. "I thought you got this antsy look when you heard he was a Courser. Is he alive?" The question was addressed to Nick Valentine, because he was checking on the Courser's vitals.

"Yeah, but only just. You put quite a lump on his noggin and I don't like how it feels. Pass me that biometric scanner, would you?" Deacon obliged. "If his skull's fractured—. Damn. It is. And what the hell is _that_?" He frowned at the display before he set it aside. "Okay, Sturges, hand me the wrench, nice and easy. Under the circumstances, I'm willing to call it self-defense, but I wanted to interrogate this guy as soon as he stopped throwing up. Now go rouse Garvey. You probably ought to send Codsworth to get Raina here with her bag of remedies, too."

"What about Kellogg?" Deacon looked in at the older man, who was still asleep, slumped to one side.

"Hasn't been a peep out of him for hours," Valentine said. "Y'know, he was around when I was still in the Institute, and that was quite a while ago now. He hasn't aged a day over the last sixty years or so. You gotta wonder how that is…"

The young Courser was still unconscious some half an hour later when Raina arrived. "Subdural hematoma," she diagnosed. "Simply put, his brain is bruised, and bruises swell. When there's no more room to expand into, and it keeps on expanding anyway, it can kill him. Now I'm not a brain surgeon, but there is something I can do. I can take out a piece of his skull in the area where he's bruised. It's called trephination, and it's a form of surgery that goes back into prehistoric times."

* * *

"That is correct. Many ancient societies practiced it. There are fossils which show new bone growth around the burr holes, indicating that the patient lived. It was done to let out evil spirits or to let in good ones, depending on the culture. So you weren't joking when you said she performed brain surgery," Dr. Carrington frowned. "I would call it decompressive craniectomy rather than trephination, however. What tools did she use?"

"Well, you know how Mr. Handys have a saw blade attachment? Her Mr. Handy had a medical mode—which for some reason had a French accent, don't ask me why. It did the cutting at her direction, but once the chunk of cranium was out, underneath the corner of the hole, this was peeking out." Deacon pulled out a matchbox and opened it to show a small rectangular device trailing some filaments finer than silk thread; only the light gleaming on the wire showed that they were even there.

"A Courser chip?" Desdemona nearly dropped her cigarette. "A real Courser chip, recovered intact?"

"A real Courser chip, yes. Intact? Well, as intact as it can be, considering the guy got hit on the head. Oh, yeah, and the Mr. Handy did nick it when he was cutting—see?" Deacon pointed to a nearly microscopic groove on the surface. "The connections were monomolecular wire, and they broke off inside his brain. They had to take out a second chunk of bone to remove the chip. They wouldn't have dug it out of his head at all, except that once it was disturbed, the wires were cutting into the brain tissue."

"Still, that it was recovered at all…Did the Courser live?" Desdemona asked.

"He _was_ still alive when I left," Deacon told them. "He might live, he might not. He's going to be brain damaged to some degree. I mean, he had the most primitive brain surgery performed on him at a moment's notice, and then there are all the broken bits from off the chip that got left in there. What that means, if he lives—he might recover fully, he might not. Probably it'll be somewhere in between."

"What are they going to do with him?" Glory asked. "He may be a Courser, but he's still a synth. He's still one of us."

"It depends on him. They won't punish him, but they can't just leave him go either. I suggested that Amari might be able to help, and they said they'd keep her in mind." Deacon pushed his glasses a little further up his nose.

Desdemona nodded slowly, more to indicate that she heard what he was saying than because she agreed. "What about Kellogg?"

"That's…the other thing. He's dead."

"Dead! What happened?"

"Remember when I said he was slumped in his chair? Well, when the operation was over, he was still sitting the same way."

* * *

Kellogg never actually fell asleep after he was taken into custody; he just rested and waited for his chance. It felt like he was watching everything through a telescope from very far away as X6 said something to the mechanic, who replied by laying a wrench upside his head. Even the sounds were muted. Then things got very busy, and he seized the opportunity to twist his wrists in their shackles, testing the fit. If he could only get one of his hands free, that would be half the battle won, right there…

Even as he struggled with the shackles, he saw bruises bloom like purple flowers under his skin, and then the skin of his wrists tore like wet tissue paper. Thin blood seeped from the tears to soak his cuffs.

It didn't even hurt. It was damn strange, that was all….

Something came back to him from lectures read to him by the doctors of the Institute, about how delicately balanced all the cyborg anti-aging implants were, and how they worked together to keep him alive. About avoiding abdominal strain as much as possible, and what would happen if the system were damaged.

So: that was what was wrong. The system was damaged, maybe even failing, and a hundred odd years of hard living was catching up to him. Ordinarily he would have fought what was happening to him , he would have wrenched at the cuffs until he got them off, even if he broke bones in the process, but now, now he was just so tired, so very very tired. He would just rest a little longer first, that was all. He'd rest until they were too busy with X6-88 to look his way.

Funny, his eyes were closed, but he could still see, except that it was like he was floating above them, watching the scene like an Eyebot. He could see his own body down there, like he did when he used one of the Institute's Memory booths.

* * *

"…Some time during the night, he passed away. None of us noticed until after he was gone. Nick Valentine said the guy had to be at least a hundred years old, and the autopsy confirmed it. That guy was at least as much metal and plastic inside as he was flesh and blood. Fully cyborged, from his brain down. As to what killed him exactly—Imagine the worst case of food poisoning you ever had, and multiply that by five. It's a terrible strain on the body. Then some of the cyborg parts tore loose because of the cramping, which caused internal hemorrhaging. Basically he bled to death," Deacon concluded. "And that, my compatriots of the Railroad, is the complete and unadulterated truth. Mostly."

Desdemona let out a long plume of cigarette smoke. "Very well done, Deacon. Tom, the chip is yours. Learn everything you can from it, but be careful because I don't think another one is coming our way any time soon. Everyone else, other than Deacon, back to your posts. There's still work to be done. Deacon, let's go talk to PAM."

The advanced robotic brain installed in an Assualtron body, known formally as the Predictive Analytical Machine and informally as P.A.M, was in noninteractive mode when they entered her office space, but she was ready to boot up and speak to them at a moment's notice. They brought her up to speed on the events, and after a few seconds of whirring, she stated, "The individual known as 'Kellogg' was sent with the expectation of failure. His demise or removal was an anticipated outcome. Further analysis: There is a greater than ninety-five point four percent chance that the Institute will attempt to recruit or suborn the individual known as 'Queen' again within six months' time, but not before at least sixteen days have passed."

Desdemona nodded. "Suppose we recruit her and then use her as a stalking horse, to draw them out?"

More clicking and whirring. While PAM did her thing, Deacon said to the leader out of the corner of his mouth, "Des, I gotta disagree with you on this one. Raina Queen is too important. Whatever advantage we gain from risking her is….if she's seriously hurt or killed in the process, it'll be like winning a battle but losing the war."

"Why do you say that?" Desdemona asked.

"It'll be easier to show you than to tell you," said the chief spy. "You too, PAM. Out the tunnel way, not through the shop."

"Very well," the robot said, and the three of them went out through the escape tunnels and through the storm drain to a spot where it never got completely dry nor too soggy.

There were four saplings planted in that clearing, spaced out so as to allow them room to grow. Although they were only about a foot and a half high, they were valiantly putting out fan shaped leaves which showed an incredible, fresh, _living_ green against the dead, dry brown of the rest of the vegetation.

"These were a parting gift from Raina," Deacon explained. "Gingko biloba superior, bred to thrive in radioactivity and clean up the environment at the same time. One boy—that's the one with the blue ribbon around the stem—and three girls. They were only six inches tall when she gave them to me, but I watered them with the dirtiest water I could find, then left them out in a radstorm, and they grew a foot in a little over a week. In just a _week_ , Des, with me carrying them in plastic pots all the way here. She has thousands more ready to plant across the Commonwealth. What synths are to us, the ecosystem is to Raina—only there's dozens of us and only one of her. This is the bigger picture we're looking at—better quality of life for _everybody_."

"But—," the red headed leader began.

"Variant factors must be analyzed," P. A. M. broke in. "Analysis indicates…the individual known as 'Deacon' is correct. Further analysis: Do not attempt to recruit the individual known as 'Queen'. The presence of the individual known as 'Queen' will act as a catalyst to the possible dissolution of the Institute. Probability: Sixty-three point six-six-seven percent chance with noninterference by the Railroad. With interference by the Railroad: Less than forty-two point one percent."

"Greater than a sixty-three percent chance?" Desdemona's eyebrows went up. "I'd bet on those odds. All right, it's hands off for us."

"However, there is also a seventy-two point nine six percent chance that the individual known as 'Queen' will meet with an untimely demise in the process." P.A.M. concluded.

"Seventy three percent—I don't like those odds," Deacon said. "PAM, what do you say we try and crunch those numbers a bit? Let me buy you a coolant, and we'll brainstorm…"

Desdemona stood there looking at the little gingko trees for a moment as Deacon walked off with PAM. She tried to imagine a world where there were trees like that everywhere, a world without an Institute. Maybe even a world where it didn't matter if somebody was a synth or a robot or a human, a ghoul or a supermutant. A world that was so full of green that you could get lost in it. It didn't seem likely. Yet her heart did something funny at the thought.

Then she shook her head. They had just learned that Kellogg was dead, that 'Father' was dying, and a girl she had never met had taken down a Courser with a powerful dose of emetic. Right now, that was more than enough.

* * *

A/N: Thank you to my readers! **FalloutMinutemen** , I'm so glad you like the Nick-Raina relationship. It's a lot of fun to write, and there'll be a lot more of it. **Zeelee-vallen** , thanks! I think Carla will be sticking around Sanctuary for some time. It's not like she can go back to her regular route, since two of the Institute's heaviest hitters disappeared while traveling with her. **Val** -You _have_ to play. You really have to. I liked these companions even better than those from Dragon Age: Inquisition. (Except for Varric, of course.)

 **bearybeary** : wait and see. But remember, Nate and Nora both died in Vault 111.

 **The God of Light** : Thank you. I miss him still.


	23. Vault 81

Okay, this chapter and the next are Guestman's fault, because he spotted that I tried to sneak Curie in without explaining how she got there. (Remember the brain surgery performed by the Mr. Handy? The one with the _French accent_?) So I had to write it. Most of the chapter is a flashback, but Nick and Raina are hitting the road to General Atomics Galleria, and the chapter after next will involve Danse.

Seriously, though: Thanks, Guestman, because as it was, it was sloppy storytelling.

* * *

"You need not worry about the well being of this unfortunate young man," Curie told them, her manner cheerful. "He has passed the crisis point, and I shall be taking care of him— _and_ watching _over_ him as well." X6 had been moved to Raina's place, the Red Rocket, to continue recovering (or to die if he didn't) at a distance from the rest of the settlers, and Curie, who lived there anyway, had been put in charge of him. It was the easiest place to restrain him, if that should prove necessary, too. Sturges and several other settlers had built a concealing wall of cars and salvaged materials around the homestead, and between that and the wall of Sleeping Beauty roses, getting in was nigh impossible. Getting out was almost as challenging.

Curie continued, "If he continues to improve, in a few days' time I shall begin rehabilitation by assigning him some light duties around the settlement, such as combing les lapins and collecting eggs. If he can manage those, perhaps he may be assigned a garden patch to care for. Charting his recovery will add a great deal to my database, and of course I shall supervise him at all times. You must go and recruit other Mr. Handys and Miss Nannys for the trip into the Glowing Sea, and you can do that very well without me."

"I'm not so sure," Raina grimaced. She had been counting on Curie's help when they went to General Atomics Galleria and Greygardens.

"But of course! I am sure you will do splendidly. And you have Monsieur Valentine with you, so all will be well."

"Thanks, Curie," the detective replied. "See you in a few days."

As Raina and Nick threaded their way through the maze around her property, they bid farewell to Jonny-Say-Quoi, who was directing the agrobots in digging over the garden beds. Like Curie, he expressed confidence in them.

"I never realized how different bots can be, or how much we took them for granted in the Vault," Raina said once they reached the road. "The agrobots are meant to be drones, and they weren't given much in the way of cognitive capacity. However, they are bright enough that you can show one a bed of plants and say, 'These are beans, those are radishes, that's lettuce. If you see anything growing here that isn't a bean plant, a radish or lettuce, pull it up and throw it on the compost heap,' and they'll do it. Yet they weren't given the ability to communicate. I never questioned that until coming up Topside."

"You think they should be able to speak?" Nick asked.

"I think they should have been given more in the way of cognitive capacity as well as the ability to speak. Then there's Codsworth and Jonny. They're the exact same model—they're even in the same serial number sequence—but before Codsworth asked to be reset, he was a real mess. He sometimes talked about his family like they were there-and acted that way, too."

"Ooh. That's not good," Nick winced.

"It really wasn't. When it came to family charade night, he was….both pathetic and a little terrifying. Jonny told me it came from losing them so soon after activation, that Mr. Handys and Miss Nannys are programmed and primed to bond with the people who are there when they're activated the first time. Or the first time after using the reset codes. So it was like a small child losing his parents and growing up on his own. If he was a more mature bot, he would have coped better. I suppose you're wondering what my point is," she looked up at Nick.

"And it's this: That creatures which are capable of bonding emotionally with others, capable of communicating intelligently, and capable of personal growth and maturity, should not be bought, sold, and owned. They should have civil rights. They should get paid for their work and have the freedom to choose their employers. I hope it goes without saying that these apply to synths of all kinds."

"Well, thank you," he smiled wryly. "What is it with you and changing the world? First it's 'Lucids', now this. I agree, but right now it's hard enough to stay alive in this world without worrying about rights. Anyhow, Curie, Jonny and Codsworth all seem quite happy where they are, doing what they're doing. I don't know how you'd crack the programming that makes them what they are."

"Maybe they are _now_ , but Curie was only a few yards from freedom and companionship, and she couldn't even cross the threshold. That's so wrong…" King, hearing the sadness in her voice, nosed her hand. Petting him always made her feel better, he seemed to say.

* * *

Two weeks ago:

Murray, the Vault-Tec rep turned seed catalog salesman-rep, had mentioned Vault 81 when they met, and Raina had mentally filed it away as something to look into when she had a moment. That moment came when Nick casually remarked that they were near that Vault, and did she want to check it out?

"Yes, since we're so nearby," she replied, and he led her to a shantytown vacant of all but a stray Brahmin nosing around in search of forage. King looked as if he wanted to roll in the cowflops, but she called him back to her.

"It's for visiting traders," he explained as they entered the tunnel. "They don't let a whole lot of people in—they might not let _us_ in. If they do, be prepared to field a lot of comments about wastelanders. Synths too, for that matter."

"I promise not to cause any scenes, as long as they don't start one," she replied. "I'm more interested in how it compares to an Envirovault than anything else. Certainly I'm more interested in that than in the people—at least until I get to know them."

"All right. Here we are—the friendliest Vault in the Commonwealth. Mostly because they don't just shoot people on sight." He gestured to the command panel on their side of the massive Vault door.

Raina toggled the intercom and asked, "Hello? Is anyone there?"

"Hold it right there. Vault 81 security. Who is this?" asked a male voice on the other end. "We're not expecting any traders today. State your business."

"I'm from another Vault and I just wanted to see how yours compares to the one I grew up in, that's all," she replied.

"Another Vault? Right, go pull the other one. We're not opening up to you for…Oh. Overseer."

"Who is it, Edwards?" a more mature voice asked. It was a woman's voice, neither young nor old, and she spoke with authority.

"Ma'am, some new Commonwealth traveler. Not one of our usual traders," the hostile voice told her. "She claims she's from another vault."

"Well, if someone wants in, wherever they're from, they can earn it like everyone else," the woman told him. "Let me speak to them."

"Yes, ma'am," the man replied.

"Thank you. Sorry about that. Officer Edwards here was just doing his job. I'm sure you can understand our need for caution. For newcomers, we like to operate on exchange. You help us, we help you."

"All right," Raina agreed. "What is it you need?"

"Fusion cores. Three, to be precise. You get the fusion cores, we grant you access."

It was a big disappointment. "Oh. That's the one thing I can't give you. You see, I have no spares. I need all I can get to keep my vault running. I'm sorry to have troubled you."

Raina made as if to turn off the intercom, but Nick leaned over to ask, "You have a hydroponics room in there, right, where you grow your food?"

"Yes, that's right," the woman answered. "We don't compromise our inhabitants' health by buying from the surface."

"What do you grow? I'm guessing gourds, melons, mutfruit, corn, carrots, razorgrain, tatos—all the usual. Am I right?" Nick arched an eyebrow at Raina.

"Yes, but I don't see where this is leading," the Vault woman said.

"That's all right. As an alternative to the cores, would you be willing to accept seeds for food crops you don't have? Raina, you have one of those 'Basic Kitchen Garden Assortments' in your pack, don't you?"

"Yes," she replied, swinging it down from her shoulder and fishing out the package. Along the way in their travels, they delivered an identical assortment which Murray had sold to Country Crossing, and at the Lucid's suggestion, she had taken along a few extras, on the off chance they might find a buyer or want to sweeten a deal. Nick had been very right about hiring Murray; his knowledge and expertise were invaluable.

Nick took it from her hand and read off, "Let's see—in the Basic Kitchen Garden Assortment, you get seeds for a cut-and-come-again salad garden, that's at least six different kinds of greens that will produce salads all growing season, a culinary herb assortment with eight different herbs to enhance the flavor of your food, green beans for eating fresh, cannellini beans for drying and using in the off season, bull's blood beets, sugar snap peas, sweet peppers, hot peppers,—."

"Is that—you're offering us food crop seeds? You have these with you, and they're viable?" The woman sounded half confused, half amazed.

"Yes," Raina took over the intercom again. "I come from an Envirovault. I and my Mr. Handy, with our agrobots, grew these and packaged them for this year's growing season. These were grown in our vault from pre-war stock, but I tested all these crops on the surface last year. All of these survived a normal growing season with several radstorms and did not mutate. Would these be worth enough to you to admit me?"

"Yes. I should say so—ah, that is, _if_ our biologist approves them after examination," the woman replied. "I'll be there to meet you at the entrance, and we can go to Dr. Penske's laboratory."

The huge vault door opened and the mechanized bridge slid across the gap, locking into place. Raina looked around with great interest, comparing it to her home. In terms of architecture, it looked very much the same, but at home the entryway and intake processing areas were filled with boxes and boxes of the Concord Public Library's overflow, hundreds, even thousands of books, records and holotapes, all unwanted donations, duplicate copies, and items culled from the stacks. Some of them were from the days when many books were printed on cheap acid-processed paper, which yellowed and disintegrated over time, so the cleanliness of this vault was novel to her. It also looked much bigger when it wasn't full of clutter.

Several technicians were working on various pieces of equipment in the entryway, and they went from looking mildly interested to gawking at Nick and at King more than at Raina—they saw young women every day, but a battered old synth and a purebred German Shepard were probably novelties, Raina thought. A small grey blur streaked in their direction, and a tech called out "Ashes, where are you going—Ashes!"

King stopped in the middle of the walkway, and gave a single loud "Woof!"

The grey blur stopped dead, revealing itself to be a cat, and then danced backward, its back and tail arched, the very picture of a Halloween cat. The tech grabbed the cat by the scruff of its neck, swinging it up into her arms like a human baby. "Thanks! This is my little cousin's cat, and she'd be heartbroken if anything happened to him."

"No trouble at all. King here can herd loose Brahmin, round up escaped chickens and rabbits, and it seems he can even herd cats, too."

"Chickens and rabbits?" the girl asked, but at a cough from her supervisor, she made a face. "Uh—thanks again. I better go return him and then get back to work. Bye!"

"Bye," Raina replied, then turned her attention to the medical tech with the biometric scanner. He checked her over and expressed his surprise that she was radiation free, then cleared the three of them for entry.

Finally they were inside the vault itself, where a middle aged woman in a Vault suit awaited them. "Hello. I'm Gwen McNamara, Overseer of Vault 81, and you are?"

"Raina Queen. This is Nick Valentine, of Diamond City, and my dog King. Both of them are housebroken and have very good manners." She said it as brightly and cheerfully as she could. The corner of Nick's mouth quirked up to show he appreciated the subtle jab hidden in it, and approved.

"That's good to know. I don't foresee any problems while they're with you. Come with me: I want Doctor Penske to have a look at these seeds you're offering us." They followed the Overseer down into the living quarters of Vault 81.

Curie waited, as she had been waiting for over a hundred years, and listened, as she had done for over a hundred years. Forbidden to leave the research laboratory and forbidden to contact the inhabitants of the other half of Vault 81, the Miss Nanny robot had languished there with nothing to do for decades after completing the project assigned to her by the human scientists who were the only companions she had ever known. That project was a broad spectrum cure for all known diseases. Now the only things left to her were watching the mole rats and listening to the humans in the other half of the Vault through her computer terminal.

Of the two, listening to the humans was more diverting, but only by a narrow margin.

She listened to their first cries on entering the world, their very last breaths, and everything in between. She knew each vault dweller even better than their mothers did. And she was very, _very_ bored.

But today was different. She paused in her daily disinfection routine as she heard a new voice, an unfamiliar voice—no, two unfamiliar voices, a man's and a woman's, but what the woman had to say was much more interesting. "Our vault had no number. It was an Envirovault. I'm an agroecologist, and my goal in life is first of all to maintain and preserve the resources within our vault, but second, to return them to the world and do what I can to restore the environment."

The woman, whose name was Raina Queen, and a doctor in the way that Dr. Penske was, not officially but effectively all the same, went on to explain the functions of such a vault, how she was the last caretaker left, why she had left and what had happened to her since then. Dr. Penske was inspecting the seed packets and by the sound of it, taking notes, while Overseer McNamara was listening and commenting from time to time.

"And joining the Minutemen has given me a network of people who help in small ways by spreading these around wherever they go." Dr. Queen said, and Curie heard a sound as if someone had set something on a table.

"What are these?" Dr. Penske asked.

"A mixture of seeds and dirt infused with beneficial microorganisms and fertilizer, packed in blown eggshells. I seal them up with a bit of vegetable paste and paper. Then the Minutemen toss one or two of them on the ground in likely areas where there are no settlements. The shells break and the rain and wind do the rest. The seeds are from plants, shrubs and trees that should naturalize well and grow without needing any further care."

"I keep telling her she should come up with some kind of seed gun or seed bomb to cover like, a whole acre at a time," said the man.

"Maybe if it used compressed air rather than an explosive, it would work," Dr. Queen said. "Anyhow, before I went to the surface I was concerned about not introducing invasive non-native species to the area, but three seasons later, I've realized that getting _anything_ to thrive will be a blessing to the environment."

Curie felt a thrill of longing for such freedom. To be able to travel throughout the Commonwealth freely, with such a noble and worthy goal! If only she could leave the confines of the lab, she would immediately offer her help to Dr. Queen. There were so many ways she could be of service!

"Well, as far as these seeds are concerned, they look to be viable. You have no idea what a difference these will make to our diet," Dr. Perske said. "There are fewer and fewer supplies of pre-war canned goods remaining to us, and the seed stock I've been working with has suffered the same problem as any too-small gene pool: it lacks diversity. The yield has been dropping lower and lower for the last decade."

"Yes," the Overseer confirmed. "In all truth, this is worth a great deal more to us than three fusion cores. Thank you."

"You're very welcome," Dr. Queen had a nice voice, Curie decided. She sounded warm and goodnatured. "I would like to look around the Vault, if it's all right."

"Of course," Dr. Penske said. "Actually, would you mind if I accompanied you? I would like to talk about raising chickens and rabbits here as you do. And then there's the beehives..."

Curie could only listen in on conversations in the close vicinity of a terminal, so she missed a great deal of what was said, but eventually they got to the generator room, which was as close as they could get to her laboratory. So close, and yet so far...

"So how does our Vault compare to yours?" Dr. Penske asked. Her grandson had joined them, and he was having the time of his life playing with the dog Dr. Queen had brought along.

"The architecture is much the same. The layout, too, at least in terms of number of rooms and so on, but where you have people, I have plants. There's a greater emphasis on decontamination between sectors, so one envirounit can't carry over into another. Nor do you have an autoclave setting on the thermostats-that's in case of a really virulent mildew or fungus. An entire hall and every chamber attached to it can be sterilized if need be, by raising the temperature to five hundred degrees for at least an hour. Or individual chambers, if the outbreak isn't that severe."

"I had no idea an entire vault could be rigged up that way," Dr. Penske said. "I hope there were failsafes installed on it."

"Yes. We only had to use it two or three times, according to our records. Damping-off disease, you know. It was good to know it was there if we needed it. The biggest difference, though, is that in our vault, the generator room was central, instead of being at the end of everything. Your vault is significantly smaller than ours."

"Really?" Dr. Penske said.

"Yes. Where that solid wall is, we had a doorway to the other half of the vault."

The man's voice said. "I hate to point this out to you, but there actually is a doorway here. It's just hidden."

Curie heard the sound of the secret entrance opening, and if she had a heart, it would have leapt in her chest. Instead her turbine flared with sudden hope.


	24. The Hidden Vault

The concealed door slid open to reveal a dark haired young man who stood frozen, caught with an inhaler of Jet on his lips, mid huff. "I—uh—It's not what it looks like, I swear!"

"Bobby De Luca!" Dr. Penske scolded. "Well if it isn't what it looks like, then you'd better have the best explanation in the world because it looks to me like you're huffing chems! How long have you known this door was here?"

"Whoa, a secret passage? This I've gotta see," Her grandson tried to wiggle his way past the grown ups, but she caught him by the back of his vault suit.

"Oh, no you don't!" his grandmother scolded. "At least not until Security has been through and cleared it as safe. Run and tell the Head of Security that we need at least two of their people, then get Overseer McNamara. After that, I seem to remember you have some homework that needs doing."

"Awww, but I want to explore!" he pouted.

"And so you shall, but not until it is safe. Run along now!" his grandmother sped him along with a light swat upside his head. Then she turned back to the guilty De Luca. "All right, now you can explain yourself. How long have you known, and how far does it go?"

"Uh. A few…weeks, I guess?" De Luca tried to tuck his Jet away unobtrusively, but Dr. Penske held out her hand, giving him a look which suggested she would flay him if he didn't give it up. "I didn't get any further than this room. That other door is locked and nothing I did could get it to open."

Raina stepped in. "That's because this door will not unlock unless the first door is locked. If you never locked the door you came in by, this door would never unlock. Remember what I said about my vault's emphasis on decontamination? We had airlocks like this between sectors, and see?" She pointed up. "Those are nozzles for spraying disinfectant. I doubt the mechanisms still work, because the disinfectant ate through the tubing in ours inside of fifty years, but this area was meant to prevent the spread of hazardous biologicals."

Dr. Penske started and stared. "Hazardous biologicals? What was going on in there?"

"I dunno," Nick said, "but a lot of the vaults were…Well, they had functions and purposes beyond saving lives, or so I've heard."

"I find this quite disturbing," Dr. Penske said.

It took a few minutes for Security to arrive and a few more after that for the Overseer to get there. "A second, secret vault," Gwen McNamara said, looking through the safety glass into the murky half-light. "If we could open it up and go in there, it would double our living space. Even if it proves unlivable, there's so much we could salvage in the way of parts and equipment. It would make all of our lives so much easier."

She looked at Raina and her companions. "You've done a lot for us already, what with the seeds. I know it's an imposition, but none of us have any experience with this sort of set up. You know the fail-safes and you know how to run the autoclave settings. If there is a biohazard in there, your presence on the security team could mean the difference between surviving or dying for them. Please. We won't be ungrateful."

Raina looked to Nick, who sighed. "Some days we have more chances to do good than others," he said, " and this is one of them. I'd say leave King behind, since I doubt they have a dog's haz-mat suit."

The team which went into the secret vault consisted of Nick, Raina, Edwards, the security guard who nearly denied them entry, two of his people, Bobby De Luca, who wanted to avoid punishment for his chem use, his sister Lucy, and Dr. Penske. All except Nick, who couldn't catch any diseases anyway, were wearing appropriate protective gear. Unfortunately, once the first door was locked and the second one opened, the stench immediately told Raina that the hazmat suits would be useless.

" _What_ is that _smell_?" Edwards asked.

"What smell?" Bobby De Luca replied.

"If you hadn't burned out your nose huffing Jet you might be able to smell it," Dr. Penske jabbed. "However, I'm not familiar with this particular reek either—although I'm sure I've smelled it before."

"It's mole-rats. A lot of mole-rats. Live mole-rats, dead and decaying mole-rats, and mole-rat feces and urine," Raina told them. "When I first set up my steading, I had an infestation on my land, and I got to know that stench very well."

"That would be it, then" Dr. Penske nodded. "I dissected one once or twice some years ago. I understand on the surface, people are so desperate for calories and proteins that they have to eat them."

"Not me," Raina told her. "I would have to go several days without food before I would consider eating a mole-rat. Half the cases of food poisoning we get in my settlement are from eating mole-rat meat. Was there ever an earthquake or something of the sort which cracked open the vault? The reason I ask is that the mole-rats either got in from outside, or they were here all along. They can't tunnel through several inches of steel and reinforced concrete, so if the vault's integrity was never breached, then they must have been brought in."

"Never. We're tectonically stable." Dr. Penske answered.

Raina nodded thoughtfully. "Then they were brought in, probably for laboratory use. Clearly no humans have lived here for some time, decades at least, so no one has been feeding them. I've known them to gnaw their way through paper, plastic, and even tin cans when they're hungry enough, but after two hundred years, what they've probably been eating is—each other. That means they've been getting fiercer, hungrier and more competitive with every generation."

Tina De Luca said, "You're kidding, right? You're not kidding? I think I'm going to be sick."

"Try not to be, not inside your hazmat suit anyway," Dr. Penske advised her. "Dr. Queen, what do we need to know about them before we go in any further?"

"For all intents and purposes, they're blind, but they have very sensitive hearing. Same thing goes for their sense of smell. They like to tunnel underneath prey and burst out of the ground at the worst possible place. If they're very close, don't try to shoot them; just hit them as hard as you can with whatever you can. Singly, they're not much of a threat, but if you disturb a colony, especially when there are several broodmothers in it, they're going to swarm you. They carry disease, and they can shred hazmat suits. I'm sorry, but you did ask." Raina apologized.

"Oh, hell no. I'm out of here," Bobby De Luca said, but Dr. Penske blocked his way.

"If you're out of here now, you're out of here for good. You and your sister both," the woman stated.

"Bobby, don't be even _more_ of an idiot," his sister warned him. "You got us into this mess. Maybe it would be better if we left the vault, but I _don't_ want to get _kicked_ out."

"I-oh, all right. What are we going to do?" the overgrown man-child asked.

"Since we don't know what's in there, we're going to go forward one room at a time. Once we're through collecting anything useful that could be damaged by the heat, Doctor Queen is going to seal that area behind us and run the autoclave setting, sterilizing everything else. We're looking for documents, books, holotapes, computer terminals, and so forth," Dr. Penske told the group.

Raina took over, "'Autoclave' means the room in question will go up to five hundred degrees for one hour. The doors will lock and they won't open again until the interior temperature is one hundred degrees or less. If this vault is laid out anything like the way mine is, most of the time we'll be able to work around, but in a few spots we won't be able to retreat until the setting runs its cycle."

"Right! I hope everyone brought extra water and emergency rations, like I suggested? Okay, let's go." Dr. Penske, being the ranking resident of Vault 81, was in charge.

The first sector smelled of mole rats, but they saw no external signs of them. With the three security guards from the vault and Nick on the alert for any rodents, the rest of them team disconnected the terminals and moved them and other salvage to the generator room, then went forward to the next section while Raina ran the protocols for the autoclave. Once the room was undergoing sterilization, they moved on to the next section, and repeated the process. For the most part, the rooms were practically untouched. If they had been used, it had never been by many people.

As they went on, there began to be signs of mole rats, as evidenced by gnaw marks on some of the cardboard boxes and bits of shredded paper. The smell got worse, and when they descended the stairs, they discovered why.

"Okay, why is there, like three feet of dirt down here?" Bobby De Luca asked as his boots sank into it.

Raina told him, "At as guess, it's two hundred years worth of decomposed mole-rat defecation."

"Wha-Oh, God!" The chem addict tried to jump back up the stairwell.

"Don't shout or make sudden moves, you'll just-." It was too late. Raina saw the ripple of movement under the surface of the dirt, and whipped out 'Righteous Authority'. When the mole rat burst to the surface, she gave it two blasts, incinerating it. It was only the first of half a dozen, as mole rats erupted from the 'dirt' on all sides. By Raina's standards, it wasn't that bad an attack. She and King had handled worse on a Sunday afternoon, but there would be more of them. Probably a lot more.

"See what just happened? We must be as quiet as we can and walk softly. Avoid the dirt as much as you can, and stick to metal walkways and concrete floors."

As they progressed through the area as carefully as they could, they passed several functioning terminals which were broadcasting conversations from the other half of the vault. All manner of private things could be overheard, from the most ordinary chats about lunch and the day's lessons in the schoolroom, all the way to a couple of teenagers making out and a fight between husband and wife.

"What the hell are these? Listening posts?" Edwards exploded.

"Like I said, the vaults often had more than one purpose. I don't think you have to worry, though. Look there," Nick pointed out the undisturbed dust around the next such terminal. "It doesn't look like anyone's been anywhere near it in decades." He went to the nearest and tapped a few keys. "Umm-Raina, you and the doc might wanna to have a look at this."

"What have you found?" Dr. Penske asked.

They pieced it it together as they went from terminal to terminal, and it was grim. "We were intended to be test subjects," Dr. Penske said. Her voice and face were blank, and she looked much older all of a sudden.

" _Intended_ to be. Something happened to change that, though," Raina pointed out.

"That isn't much consolation. All my life, _all_ our lives for the last two hundred and ten years, were based on a lie perpetrated by Vault-tec."

"No, they weren't," Nick surprised everyone by interjecting. "Look at this here. If you read between the lines, the first Overseer, Olivette, deliberately sabotaged the mechanisms for transmitting disease to the residential side. If you want to focus on the bigwigs on whatever committee planned the vault, you can, but it strikes me that the heroism of a single individual up close, somebody who risked everything to do the right thing, ought to count for more. All your lives were built on _that_ single act."

"I-Yes, Mr. Valentine. You're right." What ought to have been an affirming moment was interrupted by Security.

"Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?" one of them shouted. Everyone looked and saw the guard pointing a weapon at Bobby De Luca.

"What am I doing?" The young man laughed nervously, trying to scoff off the accusation. "I'm not doing anything. Just, you know, helping salvage stuff."

"Bullshit. I saw you unzip your suit and tuck something inside."

"What?" C'mon, I wouldn't do that. You're seeing things." De Luca laughed again.

"What's going on?" Dr. Penske asked. "Never mind, I think I can guess. This is a medical research facility, and no doubt there are chem boxes lying about here and there. Hand them over, Bobby."

"Hand what over?" While he and the doctor were talking, his sister had come up behind them.

"Give them up, Bobby," she told him. "Already today you've nearly gotten us kicked out of the only place we ever lived. Now you're screwing up our last chance. If you don't give up everything you pocketed, then from now on, you're not my brother anymore."

He stared at her, thrusting his jaw forward like a child about to cry. "Fine." He unzipped his hazmat suit and hauled out syringes, blister packs and bottles by the handful. He'd even squirreled away meds like stimpaks and Radaway. It made a sizeable pile on a small table before he was done.

" _Thank_ you," Dr. Penske said, terse and taut.

"Right," De Luca mumbled. Turning away, he stomped down the walkway. The group was currently on the upper level of an atrium. Below them on the main floor was nothing but dirt left behind by untold generations of mole rats. A lot of it was decomposing feces, but there was also a great deal of rubbish mixed in with it, old nesting material, paper by the ton, old furniture. On the level where they were investigating, there was less feces but more rubbish.

In his petulance and anger, Bobby De Luca picked up a metal bucket and hurled it against a support pillar. It rang like a gong, reverberating through the entire atrium. Below them, the earth quivered like gelatin, and then erupted in squeaking, shrieking, screeching mole rats. Even for mole rats, they were huge, and some of them glowed the sickly green of radioactivity. Others had open sores or cancerous masses on their skin.

"Shit!" Edwards cursed, unloading a clip of bullets into the seething horde of rats. His subordinates did the same. Raina jammed another set of fusion cells into 'Righteous Authority' and followed suit.

Meanwhile, Nick Valentine was working away at the terminal beside a sealed sector. "Over here," he yelled out over the din of mole rats and gunfire. In a mad scramble, the group crammed itself into the hallway he had unlocked, and the few mole rats that had slipped in with them were easily dealt with, clubbed or kicked to death. "Can you run the autoclave setting in the atrium from here?" he asked.

"Yes, but it'll mean we're trapped in here until the cycle is finished," Raina replied.

"Do it," Dr. Penske urged her.

She did. Ugly as the mole-rats were, it was still no pleasure to see them writhe and die in the roasting heat, so she turned away once the sequence was entered, to discover that Dr. Penke and Nick were looking at a Mr. Handy-no, from the voice, a Ms. Nanny,-in a chamber off the short hallway where they'd taken refuge.

"Are you Vault-Tec security? Please, tell me you are. I have waited so very long for a representative of Vault-Tec to come and release me." The robot said in a charmingly accented voice.

"No, I'm sorry. I'm from the other side of this vault, Vault 81," Dr. Penske's brow furrowed.

"Then I cannot speak to you any further, as it is expressly forbidden that I should interact with anyone from the residential side of the vault." The Ms. Nanny turned all her eye-stalks away and went to the other side of the room.

Nick, in the meantime, was examining three lockers off to the side in the hallway. Someone had lined them up very neatly, labeled them and put vases of dried flowers around them.

"Dr. Kenneth Collins, Dr. James Flint, and Monsieur Matthew Burrows," he read, and opened the first locker. There was a skeleton in a lab coat lying inside, arranged with its hands crossed over its chest.

"Oh, please, do not disturb them!" the Ms. Nanny cried out, swooping over to Nick's side of the window. "They were my friends. I could not bury Doctor Collins or Doctor Flint according to their beliefs, but I cremated Monsieur Burrows as he wanted. If I could only leave this room, I would put his ashes in his locker alongside the others-but unless a representative of Vault-Tech releases me from my duties, I cannot."

"How did they die?" the detective asked.

"Of natural causes, all of them, Monsieur."

It seemed to Raina that the Ms. Nanny not only wanted out, she was doing everything she could to communicate how to let her out, without actually saying so. She probably had programming which forbid her from saying so directly. She went over to the window. "I am Doctor Raina Queen. And you are?"

"I am a Contagions Vulnerability Robotic Infirmary Engineer, more familiarly known as 'Curie'. I am honored to make your acquaintance. Are you in any capacity affiliated with Vault-Tec?"

"I am in charge of all the remaining Vault-Tec representatives in the Commonwealth," Raina told the bot. It was true in its way, because Murray, the only living person who had worked for Vault-Tec, was her employee. "I release you from your duties."

"Oh, thank you, Madame!" Curie immediately unlocked the door from her side. "I am so very happy to leave this room at last, and even happier to meet you. From my terminal here I can monitor activities on the residential side of the vault, so I heard what you said about your mission. Your plans for phytoremediation are so very intriguing and exciting!"

From that moment, Raina had known they would be friends. Anyone who found phytoremediation, the use of plants to clean up radiation, as exciting and intriguing as Raina did herself, was bound to be a friend of hers. In fact, Curie was very like a sister to her at this point.

However, she wasn't going to accompany them on this trip. Someone had to look after the Courier, and as Curie had pointed out, she was the logical one. A lot of good had come of that trip to Vault 81, what with one thing and another, but Raina had to wonder what would become of some of the people they'd met there.

Nick brought her back to the here-and-now by saying, "Cap for your thoughts?"

"About how we met Curie, which got me to thinking about Bobby De Luca and chem use, which reminds me that I would like to visit Goodneighbor again. I told Daisy I would, but with one thing and another, I haven't yet. You once said the mayor there has his heart in the right place. If you still think so, I have a business proposition I would like to make to him."

"What kind of business is it?" Nick asked, and the three of them continued on their way to the General Robotics Galleria.


	25. Lily-Livered Communist Maggots

Nick and Raina's first attempt to crack the security at General Atomics Galleria did not go well. In fact:

"And if you know what's good for you, you won't come back, you pack of lily-livered Communist maggots!" the Director thundered from his office as the synth sleuth and the human agroecologist sprinted away, dodging laser bolts as they ran. King loped after them, carrying a Mr. Handy arm in his mouth like a bone.

Once they were out of line of sight and no one was pursuing them, they stopped. Raina was out of breath, and she sat down heavily on the curb. "Well, that didn't go as planned," Nick commented.

"It did not. Oh, wait, your coat is smoldering at the back!" Raina pointed out.

"Wha—Oh, thanks. Better it than my skin." Nick smothered the smoking hole with dirt. "Here," he said, going into her backpack, "Have a can of water."

"Thanks." Raina drank half of it in one go, then poured some into her cupped hand so King could lap it up. "So what went wrong? I had the ID from the factory."

"Lemme have a close look at it," he requested, and she passed it to him. He glanced at the front, then turned it over, and a moment later, laughed.

"It isn't anything you'd have been able to read, but I know what the problem was," he said. "This bit at the back here, that's computer code. This 'Supervisor Kincaid' who was supposed to launch the Grand Reopening had the first name of 'Roger'. He was six-two and weighed two hundred twenty five pounds. He was also quite human. You're the wrong sex and too small. I'm technically the right gender, but too thin and too robotic."

"Huh," Raina said. "I wish I'd shown it to you before."

"It's not a big deal. I need something to get the coolant pumping in the morning. Anyhow, I think I know how this situation can be salvaged. Who do we know who's human, male, and approximately the right size and weight?"

"Deacon from the Railroad?" Raina asked.

"Yes, but who knows where he is now? I was thinking of someone else entirely. Somebody with an appropriately military bearing for dealing with Mr. Gutsy back there."

"You mean Paladin Danse?" Raina scrambled to her feet.

"That's right. Of course his help won't come for free. He doesn't like us enough for that, but once we figure out what he wants, I bet we can work out a deal. We can talk about what to tell him, and what not to tell him, as we walk."

"All right. Which way is Cambridge from here?"

Nick pointed. "That way."

They started to walk. "Hmmm." Nick intoned.

"Hmmm what?" Raina asked. "It sounds like you're thinking of something."

"Yeah…Did anything strike you as wrong about Danse? Not something bad, necessarily, just something that didn't jibe about him."

She thought for a moment. "He made me feel flustered and uncomfortable. I was wondering if that meant I was sexually attracted to him or something. I hope not, because I didn't like him very much."

"I—uh, well. He isn't the kind of guy I'd like to see you with, so I hope not too. That isn't what I had in mind, however. Remember how you said you'd like to go back to Goodneighbor? That's what sparked the memory. Y'see, Danse said he grew up in the Capitol Wastelands, only just scrounging enough food to live on, or words to that effect. Now there's a guy who hangs around the Third Rail, that's the name of the bar in Goodneighbor, a merc by the name of MacCready, who's also from the Capitol Wastelands."

"You said the name MacCready like you'd like to spit," Raina observed.

"You're not that wrong," Nick said. "He's a merc, for one thing, and mercs will do anything for enough caps. It's in the name: Mercenary. Then he also used to be a Runner, and you know what I think of them. Anyhow, MacCready's on the smallish side, about five foot-four or so, and thin with it, not that he isn't tough. He's what you'd call wiry, you know? He's got bad teeth, too. He also has this wary, hungry but proud look about him, like a stray cat that hangs around hoping you'll put out a bowl of milk but is ready to dodge a kick if you're unfriendly."

"I can visualize him from what you've just told me. I'd put down a bowl of milk, and some meat scraps if I had them." Raina nodded.

"I know you would, but do it for a real cat, not for that guy. Metaphorically, I mean. Anyhow, now think of Danse. He's well over six feet tall and built like a linebacker. You know what a linebacker is, right?" Nick glanced at her.

"Of course. It's a position in football. Danse's teeth are nice and white and even, too."

"Then you can see what I'm getting at?" Nick asked.

"Yes. Danse is too tall and too well built for someone who says he grew up hungry and desperate. So either he's lying, or he's…mistaken. And even though I hardly know him, he doesn't strike me as a liar. It would be dishonorable and unbefitting a Paladin. What are you implying?"

"That Paladin Danse may not be who he thinks he is," Nick said. "But then again, everybody's idea of what it means to grow up hungry and desperate is a bit different. It could be that Danse means he didn't eat meat with every meal, and for him, _that_ was a hardship. So let's not take this any further until we know more."

"Somewhere in there is the possibility he might be a synth," Raina stated. "One of those that Deacon and the Railroad helps."

"There is that possibility, yes." Nick nodded. "Now, speaking of liars, that Deacon is one, and the most outrageous, bold faced liar I ever met. Yet for all of that, I'd call him an honorable man. It's not what people say, it's what they do."

"I liked Deacon very much," Raina said. "I was sorry to see him go, because I would have liked to get to know him better. I laughed so much when he made me join in the polka!"

"That must have been when I was on guard. What happened?"

She grinned, remembering. "He _really_ had no idea how to dance. There were elbows and knees flying all over the place. But it was fun. Nobody ever asked me to dance before."

Chatting in that way, the three of them, including King, made their way to Cambridge.

* * *

Paladin Danse was working on his power armor, repairing the right leg armor, and humming tunelessly to himself. The area around the police station had been much quieter of late, although a few feral ghouls still showed up every night to be shot. As it was broad daylight, he decided to risk opening the garage door to enjoy the fresh air. Stepping out into the sun, he stretched and looked around.

He saw a miracle. In the dirt around the edges of the courtyard, there was a faint haze of green. Not the sickly green of radiation, either. On closer inspection, there were seedlings growing in those small pockets of dirt. There was no telling what they were, because they were at the stage where all seedlings looked alike, just two fragile leaves on a stalk as thin as thread.

But they were green, that was the amazing thing. They were a healthy, beautiful green, and they had sprouted on their own. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled up to the roof. "Scribe Haylen!" He knew she was working on the antenna array up there, and after a moment, her head appeared over the edge of the roof.

"Sir?" she called back.

"Can you come down here for a moment? There's something I have to show you."

"Yes, sir!"

When she reached him and saw what he had summoned her for, she was just as amazed as he was. "I don't know what they are either, but you're correct. This is…unprecedented. Even if it's just grass or weeds, it's a sign of renewal. I won't try to transplant them now, but I'll write a report on them and monitor them until we're relieved of duty here. Then I'll dig some up and bring them along. I have some good news, sir. I believe that with a deep range transmitter to boost the signal, I'll be able to contact the Prydwen."

"That doesn't sound like good news, since to my knowledge, we have no such transmitter."

"No, but according to mission data, there should be one at the ArcJet Systems building, which is quite nearby," Haylen told him.

"Outstanding. What do we know about this ArcJet Systems?"

While she was filling him in, they heard a familiar bark. A German Shepard appeared over the crest of the road, and shortly after, two people came into view.

"What can they want?" he asked, crossly. If it had been Raina alone, he might have been pleased to see her, because the idea that she found him attractive had grown on him. She had a fine figure, although her face wasn't as delicately molded as Haylen's nor did she have the mature sensuality of Proctor Ingram. If only she kept better company…

"Hello," Raina began, with a smile that looked sweet and maybe a bit shy too, to his eyes.

"Ms. Queen," he returned her greeting. "I see you still have 'Righteous Authority'. I trust she's been serving you well?"

"Yes, actually. Especially against animals with deadly contagions. The heat kills both bacteria and viruses."

"Excellent. What can the Brotherhood of Steel do for you—or is this a social call?"

"It's not just a social call. This is going to take some explaining. You see, there's a facility to the north of here called the General Atomics Galleria. It was intended to be a showplace for General Atomics' robotics line. Something went wrong, though…" She told them about how she had found an ID in the home factory, and going there to find a fleet of robots doing nothing useful in the middle of nowhere. "My settlement could really use them, especially with planting season coming up on us so fast. I have a great deal of experience with Mr. Handys, and Nick has a great deal of expertise when it comes to programming—."

"I'll bet he does," Danse said under his breath, which earned him a few glares. "Why are you telling me all this?"

"Because physically you fit the description of the man who was supposed to reopen the Galleria," she explained. "The director is a Mr. Gutsy with military programming, and you have a very commanding personality as well as looking the part."

The words 'you have a very commanding personality' made him stand up a little straighter. "Compliments won't soften me up that easily, Ms. Queen."

Her innocent expression convinced him it wasn't flattery as much as her reply. "It's simply the truth, Paladin Danse. Anyway, if there is anything you want or need in exchange for your help, name it. If we can do it or get it, we will."

"As it happens, there is. Near here is the ArcJet Systems building. There's something in there that we need to signal our home base. We know very little about it, and I could use the back up. If we secure the part today, then tomorrow I will accompany you to the Galleria. However, there are two conditions. On behalf of the Brotherhood, I claim any and all technical documents that may be recovered from that site, and I want you to consider, to seriously consider, joining the Brotherhood of Steel as a Scribe."

"Oh!" Raina Queen blinked. "I don't know that I would be suited to the Brotherhood, but I could consider it. As far as the technical documents go, I might need copies of some of them, if they pertain to the Mr. Handys."

"If that's all you need, information about the Handys, then yes, you could have copies. Then we have an agreement. Just let me get into my power armor."

* * *

A/N: Next chapter, ArcJet!


	26. ArcJet, Junk Jet

The trek to ArcJet Systems was simple enough, despite having to put down both feral dogs and raiders along the way, although at one point Raina Queen and her pet synth paused to comment on how some place called Greygarden was just up the hill from where they were.

Before long they reached the building, a multistoried, blockish structure with few windows. It looked to be in reasonably good shape—good enough that it would not collapse on them, at least.

"There it is, ArcJet Systems. There shouldn't be any exterior security, so we'll head in through the front," Danse told them. "Listen up. We do this clean and quiet. No heroics and by the book. Understood?"

"Um, no, actually. Whatever book you're referring to, I haven't read it," Raina replied.

"And I'm not sure how you're gonna manage quiet when you're tromping around in power armor," the synth pointed out. "What with the hydraulics and the creaking, it ain't like you're going in on little cat feet."

"That's not—Look, just take it slowly and carefully," he explained. "We watch each other's backs. Don't go in guns blazing."

"I think we can manage that," Valentine said. "Ready, Raina?"

"Yes. What might we encounter? It can't be supermutants, or there would be meatbags all over the place. Raiders and Gunners would have fortified their perimeters and posted guards. That leaves ferals, insects, or other animals," the young woman asked.

"It could be any or all of those. Well observed, civilian," he said in praise. "Stay focused and check your fire. I don't want to be hit by stray bullets or bolts."

"This ain't exactly our first rodeo," Valentine said. "Lead on, MacDuff."

"MacDuff?" Danse asked, baffled. "Never mind. Follow me."

They entered to find a room strewn with the typical debris. His lips curled involuntarily as he looked around the lobby. "It was corporations like these that put the last nail in the coffin for mankind. They exploited technology for their own gains, pocketing the cash and ignoring the damage they'd done."

" _Human_ kind," Raina emphasized, "and the coffin isn't buried yet. The rest I agree with. I suppose it's all part of the mentality which made sure the military had all it needed but the education system had go begging for funds."

"That—," Danse began to agree but then realized what she was saying. He clamped his jaws together and finished sweeping the lobby for hidden threats before stomping into the next room.

The synth detective was already there. "Hmm. The internal security system's already been taken out—and look. No blood, no bullet casings, no bodies—except for some stray parts that don't match with the prewar Protectrons. I don't think we're dealing with humans, ferals, or any of the local wildlife. I think the Institute's behind this—and from the smell of ozone, they've been here within the last ten or twenty minutes."

"You mean synths, don't you?" Danse asked the…thing in front of him. "I suppose _you'd_ know. Which side are you going to be on when they appear?" He raised his weapon threateningly.

"Put it away," the synth told him, pulling out a cigarette and lighter. "The Institute threw me in the trash long before you took your first breath. Didn't even bother to scrap me for spare parts. I'm on the side of 'The three of us getting out of here in one piece.' If you're worried about how I'll deal with killing other synths, I have about as much problem with it as, say, you have killing other humans. If it's to protect others or myself, I won't lose a wink of sleep over it." He paused. "Not that it's an option."

How could a half-destroyed, old machine make him feel tongue-tied and dull-witted in comparison? It was just plain wrong, and caused him a great deal of consternation besides.

"Fine," Danse gritted out. "Let's move out."

As they moved through the rooms, he noted and commented on, "This place is a mess, but I still see a few pieces of salvage the Brotherhood might be interested in. After we're done here, I'll have to mark this place for sweep and retrieval. You can take what you need in the way of first-aid and ammunition, but clear anything else with me before you pocket it."

"All right," Raina said, amiably enough.

Before long they entered a lab which had a collapsed corridor blocking the other end and a locked security door leading off at a right angle. "Looks like a dead end. See if you can find a way to unlock that door. I'm going to reconnoiter the area."

"Suit yourself," the synth agreed, and the two of them set to searching the room.

"Ah, let me have a look at you," Valentine said when he reached a central desk. "Okay, that's not a bad piece of coding, but….Come to Papa!"

Danse heard the security door slide back its bolts. "Good job," he said, begrudgingly. "Now let's get moving—Synth ambush! Light them up!"

The open door revealed some three or four Gen 1 synths, skeletal and sinister, plus one of the more intelligent Gen 2s as group leader. The synths opened fire, and they did the same. The next fifteen or so minutes were all flashes of light from laser pistols, sparks and parts flying from damaged and dying synths, slowly but surely pushing the metallic monstrosities back, foot by foot, through the building.

Amid the chaos, there was little time or attention to spend on watching how his companions fought, but he noticed they worked together like a practiced unit, with King darting in to distract and immobilize an opponent to be picked off easily by one of the others. The synth was an excellent shot, but he wasn't above whaling on a foe with a baton. Raina, while good with Righteous Authority, went about bashing her enemies with….

"A shovel?" he asked when combat ceased. "You don't have anything better than that?"

"Why does everybody always say that?" she fumed. "It. Works. For. Me!"

Valentine laughed. "Maybe we ought to go raid that museum like Kleo suggested, sometime soon."

"As if I have time, with planting season around the corner. All right, all right. It's not that far from Goodneighbor. We can scope it out then."

Danse didn't like the intimacy between them. Not that it seemed improper by any stretch of the imagination, but even though he was beginning to have doubts about her potential as a member of the Brotherhood, surely this young woman should have some _human_ friend willing to watch her back as she traveled. "All right. My intelligence indicates that the component we're after is in the next wing of the building. We're relatively secure here, so we'll pause to assess the state of our armor, equipment and weaponry before we move on. Reload your weapons, rehydrate yourself if necessary, and perform first aid if any is needed. In ten minutes, we're moving out."

"Understood," Raina nodded. She began checking King over for any wounds, and finding a long burn mark in his coat, began clearing away the scorched fur, looking for any injuries.

Danse took off his helmet and had a long drink of water, while the synth reloaded his gun and did something to his hand with a screwdriver. Seeing that Raina was fully occupied with her dog, he lowered his voice to speak to the detective.

"I made inquiries about you with a caravaneer," he said. "You're moderately well known throughout the Commonwealth."

"True," the synth acknowledged. "I'm flattered you took the time to ask." The yellow eyes flashed with wry lights for a moment.

"My concern was whether you could be trusted. I accept that you're fairly harmless, but there is one thing I would like to know. Why?"

"Why what? Why is the sky blue? Why does the world keep going round? Why do fools fall in love?" the synth quipped.

"Why do you travel with her? What do _you_ get out of it? Does she pay you?"

"That's quite a lot of questions to answer in only ten minutes. First, no, she doesn't pay me, although we split any caps we come across, though I might let a few more fall into her wallet than mine. Second, as for why I do it—Raina Queen is about the most intelligent person you're ever likely to meet in the ordinary course of a day, but that's book smarts, not street smarts, even though she has good instincts. She's especially unworldly when it comes to people.

"Point in case, the other day we came across a woman standing outside a hardware store wailing about her sister being inside dying. On her own, Raina would have run right in and gotten shot, because it was all a hustle. The place was full of raiders, except for the cellar full of the corpses of people who had fallen for it. I got her to go in slow and careful, and we got them before they got us. She is as innocent as they come and I'm trying to inoculate her with some worldly wisdom before she gets badly hurt or dead. A lot of bad things can happen to a young person alone out there. I'm a detective, and I've seen the aftermath.

"Third, what's in it for me? Even if I didn't like her, I know helping her is the right thing to do. So that's what I'm doing." The synth gave the screwdriver a final turn and dropped it into a pocket. "Isn't it about time to move out?"

"Yes," Danse said. This synth…was unlike any other. That was a discussion they'd had the first time they had met, but it was brought home all the stronger now.

On the other side of the door was a vast test chamber, a rocket silo, used for testing the space drive the plant was working on. The stairs and landings up to the top, where the component was supposed to be, were badly damaged, with impassable sections missing. The whole structure was several stories high, and they had emerged onto a landing about one floor up. The metal flooring groaned like a dying ghoul as they stepped on it.

"Oh, hell," the synth said.

"What's wrong?" Danse asked even as Raina let out a moan.

"She's got a problem with heights. A bad problem. She gets vertigo standing on a chair to change a lightbulb. That's not an exaggeration, I've seen it happen." The synth took her hand, and said to her in a reassuring voice. "It's gonna be okay, kid. Keep hold of me, and I'll get you to the ground safe, okay?"

"Okay," she repeated.

"We're not even that high up," Danse pointed out. "The worst that might happen is that she'd twist her ankle."

"Doesn't matter. There's no rationality to this. C'mon, this way." With something like tenderness, the synth led the phobic girl to the elevator. "Damn. There's no power. Well, the stairs are here. Where the heck is this deep range transmitter thing, anyway?"

"It should be in the control room at the top of the tower," Danse replied.

"Then you better pray there's some way of powering up the elevator, because I don't know if you noticed, but the stairs are completely out in some places and none of us can fly."

"Then we keep on going down for now, and hope we can find something," he said, looking at how Raina was holding on to the synth for dear life. Well, there went any hope of her joining the Brotherhood. If she couldn't handle a metal gridwork landing which was only one story off the ground, she certainly couldn't ride in a vertibird or live on the Prydwen.

They went down the stairs, Raina so tense and rigid at first she looked ready to snap, but as they reached the turn and the lower steps she gradually relaxed.

"I never could handle heights, not even when I was very small," she muttered. "Then my sister died in a fall when some scaffolding collapsed—and recently I fell off a roof in Concord. Never mind that I didn't get hurt, I still fell."

"You should have been wearing power armor," Danse said. "No need to fear a fall when you're in power armor."

"I was wearing power armor. It didn't help."

They reached the ground. "There has to be a power backup somewhere. Scout the maintence area off the main chamber," Danse ordered. "I'll stay here and watch our backs."

"All right," the synth agreed. He and Raina went down the corridor which was lit with the rusty, sullen glow of emergency lights. He could hear them talking, as some acoustic quality of the huge area allowed sound to carry.

"Hey, look at this," said the synth.

"What is it? Obviously some kind of weapon, but what projectile does it use?"

"Hard to say—oh, I get it!" He heard a chugging, huffing sound. "It takes anything you wanna load into it, any old junk. This is an air compressor. Heh, you know what you're gonna use this for?"

They said in unison, "A seed gun!" and laughed.

"If he lets me keep it," Raina said. "which he probably won't."

"He might. I mean, this isn't exactly state of the art technology here. It's cobbled together from bits and pieces and held together with duct tape and glue. I'll carry it. Let's keep looking for the power switch."

A few minutes later, the power cut in—and then he was mobbed by synths. "I'm overwhelmed," he yelled. The next few minutes were again awash with fighting, in the dark this time with strobe-flashing bolts from laser guns, shock batons sizzling with electricity and the grating voices of the Gen 1 and 2s. Eventually they were the only ones left, two men—uh, no, one _man_ , one synth, a woman and a dog, breathless and enervated, but alive and functional.

Once they had recovered fusion cells and ammo, they went into the elevator. It let them out on another grillwork landing, this one much higher up, and again Raina had to be helped along. They were only just in time to prevent the synths from making off with the deep range transmitter, but it was victory which mattered, after all. There were some other items of interest in the control room, but investigating it more thoroughly would best be left to the scribes.

As they had a look around, Danse stole a glance or two at Raina Queen. It was true, she was attractive, but if she wasn't Brotherhood material, there was no point in pursuing that attraction. His whole life was the Brotherhood, and besides, she had poor taste in friends and ill-informed opinions.

The synth did submit the odd weapon they had found, which was some kind of junk jet, and he wasted no time in telling them they could keep it. "I happened to overhear you," he told them, feeling generous. "What do you mean, you're going to use it as a seed gun?"

"Um—I didn't know you heard us. It would be for planting an entire field at a time," Raina explained. "There's a lot of backbreaking labor involved in planting."

"I suppose, but it seems a very inefficient distribution method. Half the seed could be wasted."

"You could be right—but I'd still like to try it." Raina stuck her chin out in defiance.

They took the elevator outside, and emerged into a world made glorious by a setting sun.

"We should be able to get back to the police station before dark," Danse commented. "You kept your part of the bargain, and I'm prepared to keep mine. As far as joining the Brotherhood of Steel goes—I won't hold you to that. You're a fine young woman, but a soldier can't have a weakness like a fear of heights."

"It's impolite to call attention to a person's shortcomings. We all have weaknesses of some kind," the detective pointed out, pulling out his cigarettes. "Even those of us who're certain we don't. You…might want to remember that, Paladin."

* * *

A/N: Next chapter, the return to General Atomics Galleria!

Thank you to all my readers, those who have just discovered Hiding In The Green, and those who have been here all along. BTW, I did a guest chapter for Guestman's fic s/11808925/1/The-Columbian-Wasteland set in the DC area a few years after the end of Fallout 3. In it, Elder Lyons is still alive, although in uncertain health, and his daughter and the Lone Wanderer, Alec Taggart, are married.

I quote: The Brotherhood is on the rise. A great discovery is made, one that could cement the Brotherhoods position as the dominant power on the East Coast. Teams are sent into the Columbian Wasteland to find new technology. What will they find? First story, so please be gentle. Rated T for safety. Takes place in an AU where Sarah Lyons doesn't die. Find out how.


	27. Greygarden

Paladin Danse was willing to keep his side of the bargain, but he wasn't ready to start out immediately the next day. He wanted the deep range transmitter installed, tested, and to successfully communicate with Command before he accompanied them to the Galleria, which would have been fine except that it didn't work right the first time, or the second, or the third. Raina would have offered to help, but the antenna array was on the roof and her fear of heights would have kicked in.

After whiling away the morning waiting, with Rhys making nasty remarks while Danse and Haylen worked on the antenna, Raina and Nick's eyes met.

"Greygarden?" Raina asked. Nick nodded. Soon they were on their way to the robot-run homestead.

"This looks familiar," the agroecologist said as they mounted the hill to the farm.

"Well, we did pass by just yesterday," the detective pointed out.

"More familiar than that," she said, and Nick Valentine stole a glance at her face.

"You look like you're working out a chess move in your head or something," he observed, seeing her creased brow and noncommittal mouth.

Her face cleared. "You're the last person from whom I need to keep this a secret. Or keep any secrets from, at all. I—never explained why I'm like bread starter."

"You mean when you told me I'm a grafted tree? No, you didn't," he said.

"Well, now I'm telling why. Yeast used to be available in every grocery story, in cakes or dry granules, but now if you want raised bread, you have to have a crock of bread starter, a yeast culture, just like people did for thousands of years. Yeast is a living thing, so you have to keep bread starter alive by feeding it flour and water, storing it somewhere that's not too hot or too cold, and so on. When you go to make bread, you put the starter into the dough, let it sit and rise, punch it back down, let it rise again-but before you shape it into loaves and bake it, you take out a big lump of dough and put it back in the crock, for next time. Then it's renewed, but it's still the same bread starter. There's always some of the original culture in the starter, no matter how many loaves you make."

She paused and went on, "Another name for that kind of bread starter is a 'mother'. There's something of Theodosia left in me—and of Margaret, Constancia, Melisande, Catherine and Ulrike. Memory can be transmitted genetically, but only if the genes are not recombined during conception. That's our theory, anyway. Theodosia was here, and she was here more than once. I can tell. I think she knew Dr. Grey."

"You inherited memories?" he asked, a little stunned. "Geez, no wonder you understand what it is to be…to be me."

"It isn't equivalent," she said, staunchly. "For one thing, it was and is our choice. Mostly inherited memory applies to things my predecessors did a lot, so I was born knowing how to speak and read and write, knowing how to get around our vault—routine things. Learned memories. Personal memories are slippery, like trying to catch minnows in a stream with your bare hands. Which I _have_ done, by the way, in the pond and stream environment chambers."

"Geez," he repeated. "I wonder if that's how the Institute makes Gen 3s with functioning memories straight out of the box. It obviously doesn't bother you much, if at all. How do you handle it?"

"For me it's perfectly normal," she shrugged as they continued their climb up the hill. "I am me, not Theodosia or any of those who came between her and me. It helps that we have a commonality of purpose—the Vault. But we do alternate donors so there's variation between sisters. If I could start up a younger sister in vitro, I wouldn't use my cells, I'd use Jo's and then Vicky's."

Jo and Vicky were her deceased sisters, he recalled. They had reached the house and garage attached to the property, both in typical condition for abandoned property in the Commonwealth. Part of the house had collapsed to the point where it looked to be inaccessible, and the rest….

"I'd be afraid to go in there for fear the floor would give way, a broken board would pierce a leg artery and I'd bleed out. If I still had leg arteries, that is," Nick commented.

"No need to go in there," Raina agreed. "It's the robots we want to talk to. I wonder if they'll recognize me." The greenhouse and fields around it were maintained impeccably, and they could see agribots working in the field.

Within the greenhouse were three Mr. Handys who differed in color from the agribots but also from each other. The nearest swiveled its eyestalks toward them, and then stopped what it was doing entirely, swooping in their direction. "Visitors! Darlings, it's so good—Doctor Queen? You are a parthenogenetic daughter of Theodosia Queen, it's unmistakable."

"Yes, I am. I'm Raina Queen," Raina admitted. "I have some of Theodosia's memories of this place. But how did you know about my family?" Her gaze fell upon the banks of mutfruit growing in planters. The plants in question had thick, gnarled trunks, like the original plants back in the vault, plants which were more than a century old. "One of my elder sisters came here!"

"Of course! It was your sister Constancia. Like you, she found she remembered Greygarden once she reached us. Green, Brown, it's one of the Doctors Queen, come to pay a call. Let me get the kettle on, and I'll make you a cup of hubflower tea."

As the robot swooped off toward the pump, Nick leaned over to ask Raina, "Help an old flatfoot out, would ya? What the heck does 'party-o-gene-whatsis' mean?"

"Literally, virgin birth—and no jokes about it, please. Practically speaking, it means reproduction without sex or without genetic contribution from a second parent. It happens naturally with creatures like bees, where unfertilized eggs hatch out into worker bees. I guess cloning could be considered a form of it."

"Ya learn something new every day…" the detective said.

Once the tea was ready, Supervisor White explained, "To begin at the beginning, Dr. Grey and Dr. Theodosia Queen were both part of the Concord Seed Exchange Bank, which became your Envirovault. In fact, he donated a substantial portion of the funds for its construction."

"How did he afford it?" Nick asked, ever with an edge of cynicism.

"He was a senior research scientist for RobCo, darling. His heart was in the land, though. He and Doctor Theodosia were good friends, despite the age difference—they interacted much as the two of you do. She often visited here—and he was very upset when she disappeared. Then, of course, the war happened. We buried him in the field out there," Supervisor White pointed. "It was what he would have wanted. As you can tell, he modified our programming rather extensively, so we could operate autonomously—and so we have been."

"I noticed the lack of servility that most Mr. Handys show," Raina said. "I'm glad of it. It isn't right to code it into your personality."

" _Thank_ you, darling. It's been a boon to us—so many of our kind go completely round the bend without humans to serve. Yet one does want direction in life—which was why we were so glad when Dr. Constancia Queen found us. Dr. Constancia brought us mutfruit—before that, we were cultivating wild melons and gourds, hardly nutritionally balanced. She asked us to grow mutfruit and spread them through trade and sale, so we did.

"Then she left for Diamond City—and she never returned. We never learned what happened to her," Supervisor White finished.

"Neither did we," Raina said. She set her teacup down on the patio table. "I have a mission planned-the reforestation of the Glowing Sea with Gingko Biloba seedlings genetically engineered to thrive in areas with high radiation and clear them of radioactivity. Would you be willing to assist me by helping plant these trees as you helped Constancia with the mutfruit?"

"Of course, darling. We aren't about to simply go looking for _any_ old human to give us direction, but Dr. Theodosia was practically one of the family, and since for all intents and purposes, you _are_ her—well, that makes all the difference."

"Really? You _want_ to help? We don't have to fight our way through an industrial plant full of hostile synths first and you aren't going to suddenly turn on us or- -," Raina began.

"Well, if you want to be a dear, our ground water here is simply _terrible_. There is the old water treatment plant not too far away from here-if you were to repair the pumps, the entire region would have running water again," Supervisor White suggested.

Raina sighed just a little while Nick got out the map. "If you could mark it, ma'am, we'll look into it."

* * *

A/N: A short chapter to get back into the swing. Sorry about the delay. There were several factors, the most important of which are finals, final papers, and...new cats! I adopted a pair of littermates, two grey and white boys about a year old, who are now named Bogart and Brando, because I do love classic movies. All hail my new feline overlords! It took a while to get over the death of my old guy, and I waited until it felt right. Now my ribs hurt from laughing at their antics. Young cats are pure energy.


	28. Shoes and Postapocalyptic Life

Morning, the Cambridge Police Station:

It had never occurred to Raina that one of the more frustrating aspects of postapocalyptic life would be finding well-fitting, durable shoes. She considered the footgear she was about to put on: a crude but useful moccasin she'd made out of radstag leather with a outsole cut from a radial tire. The tire was wearing out faster than the leather, but then the tire was over two hundred years old.

Theodosia's memories conjured up visions of shoe stores where they had dozens of pairs in her exact size, in a dazzling array of colors, sizes and styles fit for everything from dancing at a wedding to mucking out a cow barn. Like clean, safe water flowing from a faucet whenever you turned it on, wherever you went, shoes were something people used to take for granted.

Now, two hundred and ten years after the end of the world, or the end of the old world, anyway, you made do with whatever you could. Nobody made shoes for sale anymore, and going barefoot was decidedly not an option. That would be a good way to lose a toe, if not the whole foot. It was a great deal of trouble to tan more leather, especially since with planting time at hand, she would have even less time for such chores. Could she unpick the stitches and simply replace the sole?

"Cap for your thoughts," Nick said, flipping her a Nuka-Cola cap.

She caught it in midair. "Planting time, and how I'll be nailed down to one spot for some time. It's not that I mind the work, planting time is one of my favorite time of year, but….I like what we've been doing, too. I tell you, if I found out I was actually a synth, my reaction would be, 'Good. Now make a twin or three of me, that way I might actually be able to get done everything I have to get done.'"

He chuckled. "Don't let Danse catch you saying that. It's too bad you're not a synth. Then we could keep this up until Judgment Day—except I guess we missed that."

"I don't know that we missed it. I think we preempted it. The heavens will open, Gabriel will blow his horn, the host of angels will pour down—and read, written in destruction across the face of the Earth, 'We were here. Where were you?' They missed the party. God had nothing to do with what we did, any more than I would tear down my garden and put it to the torch." Raina looked at him and quipped, "Gardening, not prostitution, is actually the world's oldest profession. If you believe the Bible, anyway."

He smiled again, but then his face went serious. "Back to what you were saying before. If you're planning on staying put for a while soon, first let's hash out what all you want to get done before that. There's recruiting the robots at the Galleria today, then we're going to swing by Goodneighbor—."

"And check in with Ellie at the Agency in case any cases have come in," Raina interjected. "Don't forget there's one last Eddie Winter tape to collect, too. The one in Quincy."

"Right, and once we have those, there'll be Eddie himself to deal with—provided you're still in."

"To the end and after, Nick," Raina told him. "After that, it'll be the Glowing Sea. Provided we survive that, and provided Mayor Hancock agrees to the proposal I make, it's back to Goodneighbor. Then it'll be time to stop traveling so much."

"Provided nothing else pops up on the horizon. My point is, you gotta full dance card already, kid. You need more help. Now, those robots we're recruiting today, where do you think they're going to go after the planting in the Glowing Sea is done? We're going to be doing a number on their protocols to free them up from their routines. The Galleria's in ruins. I think if you offered them a place at your homestead, they'd take it. By then they'll have some experience at planting, anyway. Jonny-Say-Quoi can supervise them like White, Brown and Greene at Greygarden," Nick explained. "Then you don't have to worry, and neither do I."

"You've put some thought into this," Raina realized.

"Sure have. Look, the Institute knows roughly where you live, but they don't know who you are. They're sending people out to look for you, and it was only because of Deacon and Mama Murphy that things didn't go worse. I'm thinking that moving around is the safest thing you can do."

"Really? But...there's the people who are coming to study beekeeping," Raina said.

"Teach Curie, and she can teach them. I know this isn't how you want to do things, but the truth is, everything you've planned, the replanting project, the seed company, the proposal you wanna make to Hancock, your ideas for cottage industries- - If you're incapacitated, killed or kidnapped, at this point, all of it will fail and die. Which means you have to stay alive and out of the hands of the Institute." Nick took out his cigarettes, selected one, and tamped the end before he lit it.

"And yet practically every day we walk into danger and narrowly avoid death," Raina pointed out.

"That's just par for the course danger, part of living in the Commonwealth," he said. "Would it be safer if you settled down in Diamond City? Maybe. Provided the Institute hasn't replaced Mayor McDonough like Piper thinks. But you wouldn't be able to do what you have planned there, either. Staying on the move isn't a perfect answer, but it's the best I've got."

A creaking, bounding sound made them both turn their heads toward the door. Someone in power armor was approaching, and as Nick had observed at the ArcJet plant, armor like that was not designed to be stealthy. "Time to move out, soldi-er. Excuse me, Ms. Queen. We'll muster in the courtyard in ten minutes," Danse called through the door.

"Muster?" Nick asked after the Paladin had retreated. "There's only three of us. That guy just lives and breathes the Brotherhood. No room left for anything else."

"Which, if what we suspect is true, will devastate him, if it's ever found out," Raina speculated. "Part of why he has me so confused is that he, like so many of my friends, has this core of something incorruptible, something that makes them who they are. I mean, yours is Justice, Curie's is Curiosity. Piper's is Truth, Preston's, Helpfulness and Danse's is Loyalty. I still don't know if I find him attractive or not, but I admit I'm drawn to that quality, his loyalty."

"I hadn't thought of it quite that way, but I see what you're trying to get at. Interesting. Anyway, we better get moving before the tin can blows a gasket. By the way, what's your core?" Nick cocked his head, giving her an assessing look.

"Me? Darned if I know."

"Maybe it's hard to see it in yourself, but I can name it. Generosity. Yours is a generous spirit. You'd tear out your own bones if someone you cared about needed them, provided no one was there to stop you," Nick concluded.

"I wouldn't go that far," she riposted. "If they needed some bone marrow or a graft, I wouldn't go ripping out my own bones. I'd have a medical professional perform the procedure."

"I'll give you credit for that, but I notice you're not denying it. C'mon, let's get moving."

* * *

A/N: A thoughtful moment before they head out.


	29. The Prydwen Goeth Before a Fall

The hike back to General Atomics Galleria was uneventful, due in no small part to the fact that he and Raina had killed off or scared away anything dangerous when they were there a few days ago. Even Danse seemed in a good mood, thanks to making contact with Command the night before, and he bounded along in his power armor like he was walking on the moon.

One thing about the morning stuck out for Nick Valentine, however, and that was the green. Here and there along the way, there were patches of green, places where some Minuteman or settler had tossed one of Raina's seed and earth filled eggs. There was something about looking at the color green, at least when it was a living, natural green, that made you feel more alive yourself. Even if you were differently alive, like he was.

After all the trouble last time, the second visit to the Galleria was nothing if not anticlimactic. Danse simply walked into the compound, went in the central control offices, and barked "Stand down, soldier!" the moment the Mr. Gutsy started questioning him. He then ran the 'Grand Reopening' protocols, and the programming of every robot on the premises reverted to the backup files. The real surprise came after that, when he and Raina began assessing how much repair work each would need. Danse helped. He found the room where the spares were kept, so they didn't have to cannibalize the broken Mr. Handys. He helped with the spot-welding, applied rust remover and wiped it off afterward, attached new arms and even threw together a few mods to enhance their carrying capacities.

What was more, he was even nice about it. "I always had a knack for this sort of work," he brushed off thanks and praise, "and you needed very little assistance compared to the help you gave me at ArcJet."

Nick smiled as he went back to programming in a few other changes to the bots' protocol-code copied from the programming of the robots at Greygarden, so they would be able to function independently as the supervisors there did. _So Danse can actually be a decent guy, when he feels like it_. _Plus, nobody can say he isn't willing to work_.

Neither the detective nor the agroecologist had any inkling why the Paladin was so happy. Not yet, anyway. But they found out soon enough.

In the galleria's cafe, Raina was shoveling sand over the gas puddles on the floor, while King was drowsing in the sun outside. Nick was soldering a loose connection in Bean's torch arm when he saw King suddenly go on alert. Nick's hearing was within the normal human range, but more acute than most people's and so a moment later he heard what the dog did, a chuffing hum, one which built slowly into the throb of motors.

Raina looked up from her work. "Hah. Score one for the woman who always carries a shovel with her-could I have moved all this sand without it? Not nearly as easily. What's that noise?"

"I dunno," Nick replied, finishing the connection and going over to the door.

At that moment, Danse appeared from a building down the block and waved to get their attention. "You're about to witness something well worth seeing," he called happily, and pointed to the sky, where a dark shape was getting more and more distinct. It was too regular and symmetrical to be a storm cloud. It grew and grew as it came, the sound increasing as well, until it filled the sky with both its bulk and volume.

"That's the Prydwen," the Paladin explained with pride, "Isn't she magnificent?"

A man's voice suddenly blared from the armored zeppelin. "People Of The Commonwealth, Do Not Interfere! Our Intentions Are Peaceful! We Are The Brotherhood Of Steel!"

Nick and Raina looked at each other. Her face was a perfect picture of dismay, and his must have been much the same. They looked back up at the sky. Smaller aircraft could now be seen around the behemoth, like a school of pilot fish surrounding a huge, metallic shark.

"I don't like this," Raina said.

"Nor do I," Nick mused. "'Deep into that darkness peering, Long I stood there, wondering, fearing,'" he quoted.

"I don't like this at _all_ ," she emphasized. "Is it just me, or does the subtext read, 'We could squash all of you like bugs if you get in our way, so don't. Aren't we nice people for warning you? Just remember that going forward.'"

"No, no, I got that message, too. Peaceful intentions, my eye. The road to hell is paved with good intentions," Nick said, grimly.

"Wait, what is Danse doing?" Raina craned her neck to see.

The Paladin had set off some sort of signal. Shortly thereafter, three vertibirds peeled away from the bigger airship and descended, landing in the open area next to the Galleria. About a dozen people emerged, some in power armor, some not. Nick, observing that the central bird was larger and shinier, remarked to Raina, "Bet you anything that's a head honcho, if not _the_ head honcho. What do you say we stroll on over there and watch what happens? -From a safe distance, of course."

She nodded, and they nonchalantly sauntered over, stopping when they were far enough away so as not to pose a threat to military paranoiacs, but close enough to hear what was going on. In the meantime, everyone had gone through the protocol and salutes. The VIP in the middle of all of this was a man wearing a leather coat with a shearling lining. His hair was dark and his beard almost as fleecy as the coat's lining. He was what some would call ugly-handsome, with bone structure too good to call him hideous but too rough-hewn to call him good-looking. He also had a prominent scar or two on his face, which helped make him look dour.

"Paladin," the bigwig said to Danse, "I can only wonder what it is that is so important I had to be called groundside to see it."

"Sir, it is. I can hardly overstate the significance of this discovery," Danse replied. "If you'll follow me..." The vertibird pilots and three guards in power armor stayed with their craft, but the rest went with Danse and whoever his boss was. One was a cadet or squire, whatever they called the kids in training, a boy or a girl about Nat, Piper's sister's age. Knowing human nature, Nick hoped that for the kids' sake, they had some honorable, responsible people making sure nobody took advantage of them, but knowing human nature, he was afraid they didn't.

He and Raina tagged along as Danse led the group to a patch of ground by the ruined highway. Nick had noticed on the way in that there was something growing there. Someone had dropped a seed-egg there and some of the seeds had taken root.

"This," Danse said, gesturing at the area. "Healthy, fresh new growth, without radiation damage or signs of mutation. This isn't the only patch in the area. The Cambridge outpost has similar growth, and I've noticed several others across the region. I made positional notations of each one."

The leader knelt down, looking at the handful of sturdy, hopeful spears of green. He reached out to touch them, then hesitated. "Senior Scribe?" he asked.

"Yes, Elder Maxson," the woman said, and knelt as well. "As you know, I come from out West, and I've been to Zion Canyon, so I can say..." She reached out, detached something from a plant very carefully, "that this is a seedling of a maple tree." She held up the dry, papery wing of a maple seed, split at one end where the sprout had burst out of its casing.

"A maple tree," the Elder repeated. "How is it possible?"

"Maple seeds evolved a wing like this one so the wind could carry them for miles. It's possible that an unusual weather pattern at the right time of year swept it here-but then there are the other seedlings. Perhaps they were buried so deep underground that they never sprouted, and something brought them to the surface. I can't be sure," the scribe told him.

"Either way, that normal plant life can survive here again-," Maxson let the sentence trail off. Standing up, he met Danse's eyes. "Paladin, you showed the correct judgement. If the environment is recovering, this alters our entire mission. This may become a permanent annexation." His steady gaze swept the horizon-and stopped when it reached Nick and Raina.

"Paladin Danse, is that a synth?" Maxson asked, in the same tone of voice someone might ask, 'Is the outhouse overflowing?'

"Only the shell of one," Danse replied, much to Nick's surprise. "Functionally, it's more akin to a Mr. Handy. It belongs to Miss Queen, there."

Maxson's eyes went to Raina and found her lacking. Well, she looked like what she was-a woman who'd worked hard all day doing a dirty job, dressed in practical but shapeless and stained mechanic's overalls, her hair scraped back and out of the way. Not a vision of loveliness, in other words.

"Well, it looks to be on its last legs already. I suppose it's of no consequence," Maxson turned back to Danse. "What brought you here, Paladin?"

"Reciprocation, sir. Ms. Queen was of material help in securing the deep range transmitters. Her settlement needed the robots here for agricultural work," Danse explained.

"It is important to have community support," Maxson allowed. "I trust she'll remember this when it comes time for us to reprovision. Very well. One vertibird will take you back to Cambridge, Paladin, and fortify the outpost there. The second will return with my vertibird to the Prydwen, where Senior Scribe Neriah will put together a unit to study environmental conditions. That's all."

Nick and his young companion watched as the groups split up and returned to their aircraft. Danse snapped off a salute and a nod in their direction before they took off. Once all three craft were safely away, he and Raina exchanged uneasy looks.

"I don't even know where to begin," Raina took a deep breath, puffed out her cheeks and let out a sound that was somewhere between a whistle and a sigh. "I've unwittingly made the Commonwealth more attractive to the Brotherhood of Steel."

"True," Nick nodded. "But even if you knew, would you have done otherwise?"

"No," she replied. "Why did they have a child with them?"

"As a trainee, I'm guessing, but maybe it was somebody's son or daughter. I'm just hoping they look after the kid properly."

He went on to explain why and what could happen to a vulnerable, trusting child among authority figures they were sworn to obey. Raina, whose youth had been sheltered beyond belief, was appalled. "Have you ever investigated cases like that?"

He let out a sigh of his own. "It happened more back before the War. The original Nick Valentine put in his time in a special unit which looked into those cases. Most of those memories just aren't there. His mind scabbed them over, because it hurt too bad. I'm sure it still happens, but nobody exactly comes to me for an investigation." Nick paused. "I was impressed and surprised by what Danse did. He lied for me-well, I say _me_ , but I think it might have been more for _you_."

"Ohhh, no, he didn't," Raina waved a hand. She was looking up at the mass of Prydwen as it receded. "Nick...do you think their whole attitude, that they look down on us, is because they literally look down on us? From up there, everyone must look like tiny specks. Insignificant."

"There's something in that," he said. "In Diamond City, the people in the upper stands are all snobs."

"Hmmm," she hummed. "How do you suppose somebody could take down that zeppelin? Without weapons or violence, I mean."

"Now don't go getting any hasty ideas," he cautioned her. "Remember, there are innocent kids on that things."

"I haven't forgotten. That's why I said without weapons or violence. Most of the people up there are probably decent people, but together... I'm going to have to think about this. Now, let's get the Mr. Handys and Mr. Gutsys together and tell them where to go."

* * *

A/N: Hey everyone, the Prdwyn has arrived! This fic is now about a third of the way done! Wahoo!


	30. Plots and Plans

The eleven o'clock chime sounded, and Father sighed. Reaching for his pillbox, he tipped out the mid-morning dosage into his hand and regarded the medication, the half a dozen capsules and tablets which, while more than just sugar pills and placebos, were not much more. All they were doing was keeping him from dying _quite_ so quickly. He poured himself a glass of chilled water and swallowed the pills one by one.

How ironic, that he, who had never been exposed to radiation, who had been shielded and protected from carcinogens all his life, should wind up getting cancer anyway. A genetic flaw, a legacy from one or both of the parents he had never known.

Thinking of his parents inevitably reminded him of Kellogg, their murderer. Sending him and X6-88 out to find the survivor from Vault 111 had seemed like a good idea at the time, but so much had gone wrong. He had reports…well, calling them reports was giving them too much credit. Rumor, gossip, third hand accounts, was what they were. Some said the trader, 'Ashcan Carla' was dead, others that she was alive and well. Kellogg had strangled her half to death in front of witnesses; he had stabbed her while rascally drunk, he had sexually assaulted her. X6-88 had tried to stop him, and Kellogg had stabbed him too, or hit him in the head with a shovel, or poisoned him. X6-88 had also been drunk, and had helped Kellogg kill her. X6 was dead, or dying, or brain damaged and unfit to do anything but haul water and chop wood. At least one of those had to be true, because the Courser's chip was offline.

The only thing all the reports agreed on was that Kellogg was now dead. He was dead, and Father was no closer to finding his successor than he was before he had sent Kellogg and X6-88 out there.

Ordinarily, he would have assigned Kellogg the job of finding out what happened, but irony was at work once more. With Kellogg dead, there was no one he could recall within the Institute who had the stomach for working outside and the ability to follow the leads back to the truth. Synths were capable of many things, but they were constructed to be unimaginative, biddable, obedient, and only just smart enough to do the work they were assigned. Investigative work required imagination, analytical thought, the ability to work independently, and a certain savvy that couldn't be programmed in. Or could it?

He toggled the intercom. "I want to see all the department heads and their first tier staff, in fifteen minutes."

Very shortly, he had Justin Ayo, Clayton Holdren, Madison Li, Allie Fillmore, and Alan Binet around a conference table, while their junior counterparts arrayed in seats behind them. "What I need is someone to act as a field agent," Father told them, "someone with a very specific skill set." He explained what he was looking for, but not why. They did not need to know.

Yet they asked anyway, or more precisely, Justin Ayo did. "Father, sir-isn't this the sort of task you give to Kellogg?"

"Kellogg is dead," he replied. "The Courser who accompanied him is either dead or incapacitated. His chip is no longer functioning."

"Dead?!" A shockwave of murmurs spread throughout the room.

"I am not asking any of you to undertake this. You have put your intellectual gifts to greater, more rarefied uses, and I would not ask you to risk your lives or your health. This task requires a blunter, sturdier instrument, yet also more intelligent and independent than our synths. Paradoxical, I know, but the first department who comes up with a successful solution will have their departmental budget increased by ten percent. Come up with it today, and it will be twelve and a half percent. The departments lacking in initiative will have their budgets cut by five percent. You are dismissed." Even meetings as short as this one tired him out, and he would have to lay down for a few hours afterward. Death was catching up to him step by step.

Binet returned with an answer before three that day. "Right before the war, the Institute as it was then, was conducting a study of depression and its effect on the brain. They advertised for test subjects to undergo an experimental treatment, but in reality all those who responded had their brains scanned, everything they knew, everything they were, was recorded. Memories, personality, ethics, behaviors-."

"Get to the point, Binet," Father commanded.

"Ah. Of course, of course. Among the respondents was a police detective by the name of Nicholas Valentine. He was a very good investigator, by all accounts, with over a decade's experience. He'd been depressed ever since his fiancee was murdered. They not only took a brain scan, they took blood and tissue samples as well. There weren't enough stem cells in those samples to create a recombinant matrix, of course, since he was fully adult. That was why the Institute needed yours."

"I am aware of those facts," he told Binet. "You're working up to telling me that there is enough to create a synth of him from the existing matrix."

"Yes."

"There is a reason we do _live_ brain to brain memory transfers. Implanting recorded memories into a synth cortex rarely, if ever, works," Father pointed out.

"There's the beauty of it," Binet's smile flashed. "I ran the numbers, and there's a better than eighty percent chance of success, because making a synth of Nick Valentine has already been done once, and it succeeded. About a hundred years ago, when the Institute was trying to bridge the gap between artificial intelligence and true cognition, they created a number of prototypes. The first Nick Valentine synth is still out there somewhere. By all accounts, he's badly damaged but at least minimally functional and working as an investigator."

"A moment. If this is so, then he must be fairly well known."

"Well-yes. The disc jockey at Diamond City Radio talks about Nick Valentine, the synth detective now and then," Binet admitted.

"Then what happens when your Gen 3 Nick Valentine goes out into the Commonwealth and runs into someone who knows the earlier model? You don't think people will find that suspicious, do you?"

"We'll edit his memory, of course, give him a new name, something close enough to be familiar but different enough that no one could confuse the one for the other. As for how he'll look-well, the current Synth Valentine had the standard Gen 2 face. Any resemblance was superficial at best," argued the Robotics engineer.

"How do you plan to explain where two hundred years went and why he's still alive? He cannot be allowed to know he's a synth."

"We'll tell him he was saved the same way you were-cryogenically. He has no memory of it because of cryoamnesia," Binet nodded.

" 'Cryoamnesia'?" Father tinged the word with scorn.

"Yes. It interferes with memory storage. I made it up, of course."

"I am aware of that. Very well, you may create a Gen 3 in the image of Nicholas Valentine and download the brain scan into it. What name do you plan to give it?"

"Jack Hartman," Binet said. "Jack and Nick are similar in sound, and 'Hartman'- -."

" 'Heart' and 'Man', as in 'Valentine hearts'. A play on words. You will keep me informed of your progress-or lack thereof." Father nodded to the door.

* * *

Elsewhere:

Goodneighbor was exactly the same as it was before-dirty and rundown, seedy and seamy It also stank, but it showed a spirit and defiance that other communities (for instance, Diamond City) lacked. The first person Raina saw when they opened the gate was Deacon. He was the perfect embodiment of nonchalance as he leaned against a wall, soaking up the sun and warmth.

"Hello," Raina greeted him, while Nick offered the Railroad agent a pleasant nod and a smile.

"Oh, hey," Deacon replied, "What a day, huh?"

"Yes. Makes me glad to be Topside, despite all the dangers," Raina replied. Technically it was still winter, but the weather that day was about as perfect as it got. "So how are you?"

"Oh, fine—but it looks like Daisy wants to talk to you. We can catch up later." Deacon nodded in the direction of the Lucid woman's storefront.

"Sure," Raina agreed. The street was not the best place to catch up on everything, after all. One never knew who was listening.

The Lucid shopkeeper welcomed them with a wide smile. "Hey there! Long time, no see! You said you'd be coming back weeks ago."

"I know," Raina grimaced. "I thought we would make it back before now. What with one thing and another, though…"

"You got that right," Nick agreed. "We've been across the Commonwealth and back since then."

"Speaking of getting things right, you have been getting the shipments, haven't you?" Raina asked Daisy.

"Oh, yes. You've got a nice fat credit on your account. It's all right, hon," The Lucid leaned over her counter to tell an idler on the street, "Could you run on up and tell His Honor that Valentine and Queen are back in town?" Turning back to Nick and Raina, she confided, "Hancock's been pestering me for news of you almost since the moment you left. He really wants to see you again."

"Good," Raina said, briskly, "because I want to talk business with both of you. When would be a good time to meet up and where?"

"Any time is good for me," Daisy said. "I'll just lock up and put the 'Back Later' sign on the door. Now while we're waiting for the Mayor, what would you like to barter for? I got plenty of fusion cells today."

"Oooh, yes. Nick, you need bullets too, right?" Raina turned to her companion.

"Yeah, and I'll take all the coolant you've got." The three set about bartering until Hancock's voice cut through the shop.

"Well, if it ain't the Ace of Hearts and the Queen of Spades. What blew you two, excuse me, _three_ , back into town?" King's tongue lolled happily out of the side of his mouth as the Mayor of Goodneighbor rubbed his ears.

"Raina has a proposition for you," Nick told him. "I'd like to emphasize, that it's a business proposition. And while the three of you hash that out—."

"Nick, that was a terrible pun," Raina gave him a mock-betrayed look.

"Heh, an unintentional one," he said. "While you three talk it out, I'm going to visit Dr. Amari. Raina, I'll catch up with you either at the Rexford or the Third Rail, okay?"

"Of course," she told him.

"A business proposition, huh?" Hancock cocked an eyebrow. "You got me interested right off. What do ya say we take this upstairs to the mayoral chambers?"

"Go ahead," Nick said. "I'm sure His Honor the Mayor will be a perfect gentleman."


	31. Explanations

"Well, now I got two gals here and I got two arms," Hancock said happily, holding out his elbows. "Whadda ya say? Wanna make me the envy of all Goodneighbor?"

"Hah, as if you weren't already," Daisy jibed, but she took his arm all the same. Raina followed her lead, and took the other. Together the three of them strolled toward the State House.

"I gotta say," he turned his face to Raina, "the weed you've been sending by way of Daisy is fine, fine stuff, but I was expecting you were gonna deliver it in person. I wanted ta express my appreciation for your product, ya dig?"

"Uh-huh," Daisy said, "Just don't forget what Nick said about being a perfect gentleman."

"Hey, I never said I meant it in any impure way and I don't wanna make her uncomfortable, like. Everything been okay with you?" he asked Raina.

"There have been…difficulties," she admitted. "The Institute is looking for me, and the only good thing is, they don't know my name or what I look like, just where I live, roughly." They'd been walking while talking, and now they entered the State House, their footsteps echoing in the great spiral stairwell.

"Hey, that ain't good. How'd that happen?" Hancock asked.

"Oh, I know all about it," Daisy said. "Murray brought me a catalog along with the goods, last time. I'm thinking about becoming a vendor. In a small way, just to see if there are any buyers. You remember Murray, right?"

"Can't say that I do—oh, wait, was he that sad sack Lucid who lived over at the Rexford for a while?" Hancock remembered as they climbed the stairs. "The guy who used to work for Vault-Tec."

"Yeah. I used to have a drink with him now and then, give him a chance to talk about the old days with somebody who remembers more than just what was on the radio. He was pretty damn depressed for the longest time, but then Raina hired him to handle the business end of her company. Did him a world of good to have work again, real work. He's a whole different guy." Daisy smiled in a very meaningful way. "He doesn't stay in the Rexford anymore when he visits town either."

"No wonder he's so happy to make deliveries here!" Raina exclaimed.

"Oh, he delivers, all right," Daisy chortled.

"Good for you, Daisy! And for him too, but I'm still in the dark here," Hancock complained as they reached his office. "Hey Fahrenheit," he greeted his bodyguard/deputy mayor, who was regarding a chessboard like a cat regarding a baby molerat.

She snapped her head up, saw him with two women and asked, "Business or pleasure?"

It was a fair question, as he had sometimes brought more than one bed partner at a time, though not usually in the middle of the afternoon. "Business," he replied, and asked Raina. "Any reason Fahr can't stay while we talk?"

"No. If we reach an agreement, everybody in Goodneighbor will know about it, and if we don't, it won't matter," Raina said. She sat on the red sofa, Daisy took the yellowish one, and he pulled up a chair. "Anyhow, what Daisy was talking about is this." She took a booklet from her satchel and handed it to him.

It was about twenty pages long, and on the cover was a big yellow flower. "Queen of the Commonwealth Seed and Plant Company—'Queen of the Commonwealth'? You got an actual company? Color me impressed." He flipped through it, noting the illustrations and the typeface. "I see Piper printed this up for you.

"I know your people kept marihuana alive in your vault, and that's how it survived, but you had all this as well? Damn. I like the company motto, too. 'The common wealth of the Commonwealth.' Like, 'of the people, for the people.' So you're selling seeds and plants, stuff you can eat, stuff that can be made into medicine and chems. Stuff nobody else's got. Of course the Institute's gonna be interested in that. Now they want to know who you are and what else you have up your sleeve, am I right?"

"Yes. A few weeks ago, two Institute agents came looking for the person with access to all those seeds. Actually, there were three of them, but one, the one who led them there, was under duress. We were having a community get-together, and they showed up in the middle of it. Nick recognized one of them and a Railroad agent told him the other was actually a Courser. The first one stabbed their guide before we could stop him. Now the first one's dead, the Courser is brain damaged to the point where he can do simple tasks under close supervision, and the guide is lying low while she recovers."

"So none of them got word back to the Institute before you and your friends took them down," Hancock nodded in approval.

"That's right, but Nick thinks it's safest if I don't stay in any one place for too long, especially near home. Ever since, we've been on the road."

Daisy nodded, "Listen to Nick. He knows what he's doing."

"Yeah," Hancock "He's a guy I got a lot of respect for. If there comes a time you and he need a bolt hole, Goodneighbor's a good place to disappear. Remember that, ya dig?"

"Thank you. I may need to take you up on that offer someday." Now Raina brightened up. "And that brings me back around to my business proposition. I don't have many distributors for marijuana, just a few chosen caravaneers and Daisy here, people who I could trust not to tell where it came from. Raiders are enough trouble already.

"Since I can't be there to grow it or protect it at home right now, and there's no way of knowing how long it will be before I can go back for good, my thought was, why not grow it here? Unlike my settlement, Goodneighbor is better prepared to take on raiders. I would provide plants, seeds and know how. Daisy, you'd act as main distributor, and Mayor Hancock, you would provide a location for growing it and people to do the growing. I'm prepared to take a smaller cut of what could become a much bigger pie, so to speak."

"Umm—I like this idea. I like it a lot, but there ain't much open ground in Goodneighbor for growing anything," Hancock pointed out. It was a good idea, not a get-rich-quick idea but a get-rich- _big_ idea. It was exactly right for Goodneighbor—growing a chem right in their own backyard, what could be more perfect? There were several people who would be interested in growing weed—heh, maybe a little _too_ interested.

"Not a problem. Before it was made legal in the twenty-first century, many people grew it indoors. You have power and water here, so you'd need grow-lights, planters, a big building with room for a curing chamber as well as growing rooms. There's plenty of dirt in the streets right outside your gates. If someone can grow tatoes, they can grow cannabis—they like the same growing conditions. I'd help with setting up and teaching the growers," Raina was glowing with excitement and enthusiasm.

The enthusiasm was contagious, it seemed. Daisy said with a delighted smile, "I'm willing—and there are several warehouses with nothing much in them but trash."

"There are Triggermen using them at the moment—so yeah, there's nothing in them but trash. They'll have to be cleared out first. Then there'll have ta be somebody levelheaded in charge, somebody to watch over the day-to-day…", Hancock thought aloud. "Who would—ah! I know exactly the right person. Fahr, would you send somebody ta ask Bobbi No-Nose to swing by?"

His lieutenant nodded and left the office.

He turned back to the rest of the party. "Bobbi No-Nose and I go back a ways, but it's been a while since I cut her in on anything. She's tough, she's gotta good feel for people and with her running it, what has to get done will get done. While we're waiting on her, why don't you help yourselves to drinks."

"I brought something to add to the refreshments," Raina said, pulling a few wrapped bundles out of her satchel and laying them out on the coffee table. She started unwrapping them as Daisy watched.

"Oh, are these sourdough pretzels?" Daisy asked. "It's been ages—and they're not prewar stock! Did you make them?"

"Yes, I did. We came across a stockpile of salt, so I used some for this. I bet it's been a while since you had anything like this, either." She showed the Lucid woman a square of something fluffy looking and white. "It's candy, whipped up out of egg whites, honey and dried tarberries."

"Let me break off just a little bit," Daisy said, popping the treat in her mouth. "Heaven! Forget the weed, all you have to do is sell this and you'll die rich."

Raina laughed and it was like her smile, sweet, warm, joyous and a little goofy. "Then you don't want to try out these?" The third bundle was joints, and a lot of them, too. "I branched out into different strains since the last shipment."

"You brought the weed and the snacks for when the munchies hit!" Daisy chortled.

"Give me a year or two, and I'll bring popcorn," Raina promised.

Hancock slipped a Mentat into his mouth and let it dissolve on his tongue while they talked. Letting his eyes half close, he regarded Raina.

Yeah, she was attractive and he'd had more than a few impure thoughts about her, just the kind of casual thoughts a guy might have about screwing somebody he found attractive. Thoughts like that just came with having balls. Where she was different was that he wanted to find out more about her, to watch her face and make her smile that sweet smile of hers, to make her laugh like that. What intrigued him most was, she knew who she was and exactly what she was supposed to do with her life, and that was rare. She liked herself, and that was even rarer. She was something else…

Maybe, if he hung around her enough, some of that self-esteem and self-confidence would rub off on him. Hell, it had been a while since he'd skipped town for any length of time. Maybe it was time to blow the stink off, and what better way to do that than hitting the road with a couple of friends, one old and one new? Maybe he'd bring that up with Nick when they met at the Third Rail later…

* * *

Meanwhile, Nick Valentine walked down the avenue to the Memory Den, nodding to the Neighborhood Watch as he passed them. His hand went to the pocket where he'd stashed his souvenir from the party in Sanctuary which Kellogg and the Courser had so memorably crashed. Curie and Raina had autopsied the Institute's hatchet man before burying him under a ton of compost, as much to remove everything nonorganic as to see what had killed him. Raina was big on compost being all-natural, but flexible about what went into it.

From Kellogg's brain, they had removed a device which was cozying in between the hippocampi, the collective seat of spatial memory. From Raina and Curie's cryptic comments about those lobes, they were pretty seedy-looking, as though Kellogg should have been senile to the point of drooling. As he obviously hadn't been, they thought the device was some sort of artificial memory storage.

So he had asked for it so he could take it to Amari and see what she could make of it. Knowing what Kellogg knew about the Institute, and how much they knew about who they were looking for—that could prove invaluable. On entering the Den, he spent a few minutes flirting with Irma as usual before he went down to see Amari only to find her talking to Deacon.

"Hey, if it isn't the Sleuth of Steel! How are you, Nick, m'man?" Deacon greeted him.

"Just fine, Deacon. What brings you here?" Nick replied.

"That little party gift I took home to show the folks. You know the one, about yea big…" He held up his hand, showing his thumb and forefinger pinching air to indicated the chip from the Courser's head. "Because of the wires getting borked when the ladies took it out, we're having trouble reading what's on it. I thought Amari could help, so here I stand before you."

"You know Deacon?" Amari asked. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Then perhaps you know how he came into possession of that chip, because I certainly don't believe the story he's telling."

"I swear, Amari, an anvil dropped right out of the sky and hit him in the head. Lucky it was one of those glancing blows and not a direct hit, or his brains would have been strawberry jam," Deacon.

Amari scoffed. "As if you ever even saw strawberry jam. The closest you've probably ever come is the filling in a Fancy Lads Snack Cake."

"The boy is telling the truth," Nick said, hand on his heart and tongue firmly in cheek, "I know because I was there, and the second anvil struck the next guy full on. Turns out he had this in his head, and _I_ want to know what's on _it_."

He handed over a sealed test tube in which the device floated, preserved in an alcohol solution. "I can wait my turn, though."

"Is that…part of a hippocampus?" Amari asked.

"Uh—I'm afraid so. Y'see, after the first one came out damaged, we didn't want this one ruined, so it was easier to take a chunk of brain with it," Nick explained.

"What is going on here? Who were the men these came out of? Why should I have anything to do with it?" the doctor protested.

Deacon sighed. "Shall we tell her? I only tell the truth when I can't be bothered to make up something more interesting."

"I think in this case, the truth is more interesting than anything you can come up with," Nick replied. "Doctor Amari, we have a young friend who is wanted by the Institute…"

* * *

A/N: TBC…. I know I haven't been as active in thanking my readers and reviewers as I should be. I appreciate both my long term readers and those who have just discovered 'Hiding,' and I hope to get caught up with that and more this coming weekend.

Thanks,

Scrib.


	32. Surprises

Bobbi No-Nose stomped up the State House stairs like a Deathclaw with a sore foot, and her eyes were also about as warm and friendly as a Deathclaw's. Of course, her eyes were always like that; when people turned into ghouls—. No, Hancock corrected himself, when they turned into irradiated citizens, or Lucids or whatever the hell people wanted to call them, their eyes changed too. The commonest changes were demon-style dark, no whites showing at all, or else fish-belly—dead fish belly, that is. Then there were people like Kent, where the whites of their eyes turned red, but the iris didn't change. That was rarer.

Nobody knew why some people got one kind of eye rather than another, because it didn't seem to matter what color your eyes were before. He and Daisy were lucky . They'd both gotten dark eyes, and whatever people said about them, at least they weren't creepy like fish-belly eyes.

Bobbi No-Nose had not been as lucky, let's put it that way. She had eyes that weren't just filmy white, it was like they belonged to some monster fish from so far down that the rads hadn't reached there yet.

Of course he never let on what he thought of her or her eyes, so when she gritted out, "Since when do you order me to come to your office like I was just some lackey, Hancock?", he turned on the charm.

"Hey, that was the furthest thing from my mind. Ya see, when I realized this called for somebody who can stick to a job an' keep a crew working, I said ta myself, this is for Bobbie. I know I ain't cut you in on anything for a while, so to make amends, this one is big. Real big. An' I asked Fahr to send somebody to ask ya—not order ya, just ask ya, to step to my office. If whoever she sent lacked what ya might call couth, then I'm sorry. Daisy here'll vouch for what I said to Fahrenheit. Right, Daisy?"

"Right," the shopkeeper confirmed. "Pull up a seat, Bobbi. You'll be kicking yourself if you pass this one up."

"First lemme introduce Raina Queen, because this is her baby. Raina, Bobbi No-nose, one of our most highly respected citizens in all of Goodneighbor."

"I'm glad to meet you," Raina said. "What I want to do, is make Goodneighbor the number one producer of hemp products in the whole Commonwealth, if not the world."

"Hemp?" Bobbi asked. "You can't mean marijuana. It's extinct."

"Not quite," Raina told her, holding out four joints. "Cannabis sativa is one of the most versatile and valuable plants known to humans, and one of the oldest cultivated crops as well. It can be used to make rope, clothes, food, plastics, paper, textiles, animal feed, paint, biofuel, cosmetics and toiletries. It has many therapeutic properties, it grows fast, it sucks radiation out of the soil and water—plus if all else fails, you can get really, really stoned on it."

That last statement was aimed at him and accompanied by a half smile and a flirtatious wink.

"Raina is gonna supply plants, seeds, and know-how. I'll provide buildings, power and water. Daisy is signed on as the wholesale distributor . An' you, Bobbi, if ya choose to sign on, will be in charge of physical production. Growing, curing, packaging—that kinda stuff. Plus supervising the folks who do the work, a course," Hancock offered. "We split the net profits four ways."

"Uh-uh," Bobbi said, choosing a joint and smelling it. "Not if you plan to split it evenly, four ways. I'd be doing more work than any of you."

"I feel ya," Hancock said. "You and Daisy would be active partners, Raina and me the more quiet ones. So—what do ya say to thirty percent each to you and Daisy, twenty percent each to me and Raina?"

"I'd say that's a start," Bobbi said. "Isn't anyone going to offer me a light?"

* * *

At the Memory Den, Deacon watched Dr. Amari fit the memory widget into Nick Valentine's head. Excitement and anticipation chased each other up and down his spine like tiny kittens romping in a hallway, and his blood was fizzing in his veins like ice cold Nuka Quantum. This was it, this would answer the mystery of where the Institute was, and how they could get in, and...

"I'm sorry, Doc. I'm not getting anything but flashes." Valentine looked at Amari and shrugged.

"I was afraid of that. All the code that comes out of the Institute is doubly encrypted," Amari said.

"Aw, no Doc, c'mon," Deacon coaxed. "We're this close to the answers." He held up his forefinger and thumb an inch apart. "You can't tell me there's _nothing_ you can do."

Amari sighed. "There is perhaps one thing…Where one brain failed, two might succeed..." She explained.

"I'm willing," Nick Valentine said immediately. "When Raina's done talking to Hancock—."

"Why wait for her?" Deacon interjected. "I'm right here, ready, willing and able. I spent the last several days of Kellogg's life traveling with him, so I'll have a better handle on him. Besides, if he's done half of what he's rumored…does she really need that stuff in her head. Unless it's something personal you have against me…"

Nick and Amari regarded him for a moment. "I got nothing against you," Valentine said. "So, far you're all right in my book."

"Mr. Deacon is, all appearances aside, a very trustworthy individual," Amari reassured the detective. "Very well. Please take a seat in the Memory Lounger and relax. You know how it is done."

He did. The man who called himself Deacon was a long-standing customer of the Memory Den. How often had he come there to relive all the reasons why he was with the Railroad? Swinging his legs into place, he laid back and waited for the sharp, stinging kiss of the neural interface. When it came, it seemed even chillier than normal.

The test pattern on the vid fogged, then coalesced into a pulsating web of neurons. "Whoa…I haven't seen anything like this since…the last time I ate raw mirelurk meat right before I went to sleep."

"A moment, Mr. Deacon, while I try to find the strongest intact memories," Amari's voice sounded like it came from very far away. "Here is the earliest I can find—follow the brightest pathway."

"Okay—."

Then Kellogg spoke to him.

" **I should have known. You were too helpful, too damn cheerful all the time. I was planning on killing you afterward anyway, but I guess the joke was on me**."

"Holy shit!" He kicked out, cracked both the seal and the dome on the Memory Lounger. If he weren't a long-term, frequent user of Dr. Amari's services, he wouldn't have been able to wrench his mind free like that.

"Deacon!" Amari cried out. "That's dangerous!"

"Sorry, Doc. I'll pay for the damage. I—he spoke to me. He may be dead, but he's still in there—and he knows what's going on."

"I meant, dangerous to _you_. It isn't Kellogg," she explained. "Not in the way you think. At the moment, it's as though he were a holotape and Mr. Valentine, a terminal. Truly. Perhaps we should have waited for Ms. Queen after all."

"No, I can take it." Deacon eyed the Lounger. "Guess I'm going to owe you for repairs…Sorry about that. Okay. Let me sit back down again…"

Neurons linked and lit up with a pinkish-orangeish hue as he walked them, and he stepped onto a splintered wood floor. It was a child's bedroom, he realized, and the child on the bed was Kellogg himself. His mother sat in the chair next to the bed, and even in the half-light from the bedside lamp, he could see the bruises on her face. In the next room, a bear of a man blundered about drunkenly, trumpeting a half-coherent rant at his wife and son through the walls.

As he always did, Deacon wondered why the Memory Loungers showed things as if you were witnessing them, an invisible observer hovering above the action, rather than reliving them. A psychological defense mechanism, so you didn't get lost in memories, maybe. Memories...

Deacon really had read Proust and Shakespeare, which was why he liked to refer to them from time to time. Proust especially was a workout for the intellect, the triathlon of literature. _In Search of Lost Time_ , aka _Remembrance of Things Past_ , was in its deepest essence all about memory. What we think we remember is not what really happened, Proust wrote, explaining over the course of seven volumes and well over a million words. Time and ego work on our memories like wind and weather on a marble headstone, softening it, changing it. Yet the memory of the senses is deeper and truer. The past is there, as incisive and immediate as the moment it happened, if we can only find the key to unlock it. The taste of a fragment of cake soaked in tea brings back afternoons taking tea with an aunt; the soft, heavy kiss a lover bestows on a cheek brings back being tucked into bed by Mother as a child. Involuntary recollections are the only ones which matter.

The Memory Loungers were a shortcut to those Proustian moments, or so Deacon had thought. Now he knew that reliving his past was like eating the meat and vegetables left over from making broth; the vitality was boiled out of them. That was how real, how visceral Kellogg's memories were.

Leaving a childhood shadowed and tainted by an abusive alcoholic, Deacon trod the narrow path to a happier time, with Kellogg wiping dishes as his wife washed them. It was so like times he'd had with Barbara that Deacon's heart hurt, and then, too, a baby cooed and gurgled in a crib. The child he and Barbara had wanted...the child that never could have been born, because synths were turned out into the world fully functional but sterile.

The next scene was all too familiar, because Deacon had attacked the U. P. Deathclaws in that same deadening mixture of grief and rage, when Barbara lay dead.

From there, Kellogg drifted, a rootless man who would do anything for the caps, who didn't care who he killed. Then the Institute found him...

* * *

Back in the Mayor's office, the party was about to wrap up. After much discussion, the split had been settled: thirty-five percent to Bobbie, thirty to Daisy, twenty to Hancock, and fifteen to Raina. She herself had pointed out that after her initial contribution, she would have little to do with running things. Then they'd started trying out the samples, which led to devouring pretzels and candy, which of course made them thirsty as well. After mixing up a batch of Clean Wastelanders (the difference between Dirty and Clean Wastelanders was that you used Nuka Cola Quantum and vodka instead of regular Nuka Cola and whisky) everybody was extra happy.

Especially Raina. She had shed first her chestpiece, then her shoes, and was curled up in the corner of the one sofa. She didn't look like she was planning on going anywhere anytime soon, either. Maybe that was why, when Daisy was leaving, she reminded him, "Remember what Nick said? Be a gentleman, Hancock."

"Yeah, yeah. Scout's honor," he said, because he'd read the phrase somewhere and it had kinda stuck with him.

"Heh," she snorted. "Just remember, that's all."

Bobbi was the next out the door, "And here I'd been thinking you were shutting me out in the cold. Well, this more than makes up for neglecting me all these years. If it flies, anyway. I'll give you this, Hancock—you're one shrewd son of a bitch."

"Thanks," he waved. "That's how I stay mayor. So, uh, are the mole rats I've been hearin' out your way gonna stop tunneling, or what?"

Bobbi froze. "That's- -um. A renovation project of mine. I didn't realize anyone else could hear it."

"It's not a problem most places, but when I swing by my warehouse, it's like something's gonna break through the floor, ya dig?"

"Sorry. Well, with my new venture, I doubt I'll have time for much more renovating." Bobbie regarded him with a very calculating look: the prehistoric monster whose eyes hers looked like was trying to decide whether he was edible.

He gave her a level look back, not smiling. "That's good. Ya start getting carried away with projects like that, ya dunno where to stop."

Bobbie nodded, a quick, terse gesture, and left.

"You're not happy with her," Raina observed.

"I ain't unhappy either," he told her. "Just givin her a warning, that's all. So..." Hancock let the word trail off while looking at Raina, and then made an observation. "Y'know, you got funny feet. Your second toes are longer than the big ones."

Raina frowned thoughtfully at her own feet for a moment. "Yes...You mean not everybody's toes are like this?" Then she giggled. "Sorry-I think the drinks are a little stronger than I'm sued to-I mean, used to. Do you, um, mind if I ask you a question?"

"S'alright. Ask away," he replied, waving a hand airily, sending strata of smoke swirling in its wake. Maybe it was a hallucination, not smoke. Right now it was hard to tell. "What do ya wanna know?"

"Would you have sex with me?" Raina asked. "You see, I've never had sex with anyone, and you seem like you'd be a fun person to have sex with. So...would you?"

The Mayor of Goodneighbor was rarely at a loss for words but that question seized his tongue and tied it in a big old knot. "Uhhh... Lemme get this straight. You want ta punch your V-card, an' you're asking _me_ to help ya." It wasn't the first time a lovely virgin had asked him to deflower her, but it _was_ the first time in a _very_ long time since it happened anywhere but in his memories or his imagination.

"I'm sorry. Did I ask wrong?" Raina hitched herself up a little further on the sofa. "I put it wrong, didn't I?"

"Nah, it's okay," he said, because she looked like she could get real upset, which was the last thing he wanted. "Not wrong so much as movin' kinda fast. I mean, I ain't much of a reader but I know ya don't read the end of the book first."

"I'm sorry," she apologized again. "I just don't know how to go about-."

She looked like she was about to cry, so he said, "Hey, hey, hey. I ain't sayin' no. I'm just sayin' let's pretend you said, 'Would you kiss me?' And the answer is yes, I'd be happy to kiss you. Wanna give it a shot?"

"Okay..." She leaned forward, he met her halfway, and she brushed her lips against his. He demonstrated how it was supposed to be done, and the next thing he knew, he had an armful of warm girl. Raina picked up new skills fast, it seemed, and her mouth was sweet and soft. It also tasted of what she'd been drinking and smoking.

"Look," he said when they came up for air. "That was...nice. Real nice. Yeah, I'd like to go further. But you been drinkin' _and_ you're high. What you want ta do now, and what you're gonna want when you're sober are two different things. No, don't go tryin' ta kiss me again, not right now. Ya see, this is...I don't want ya to have any regrets, ya feel me? Not in the morning, not ever. So right now, this is what's gonna happen. You're gonna put your chestpiece and your shoes back on, you're gonna splash some water on your face, and then I'm gonna walk you back to your hotel room and kiss ya good night at the door. If you wanna revisit the topic sometime when you're clean and sober, you know where to find me."

"Oh," Raina said, her pupils dark and dilated. "Are you sure?" She was speaking in the very careful manner of someone who knows they are drunk but don't want it to show."

"No. Which is why we're gonna do this now before I make a liar outta Nick." At her puzzled look, he explained. "He said I was gonna be the perfect gentleman. I know I ain't that-but I can at least try ta be an imperfect one."

* * *

A/N: So...been a long time since I updated this. Reason being, I had a chance to pick up more hours at work in August, and I really needed them. But here it is, and now that school is back on, I think I should be able to go back to a more regular schedule in terms of updates. knock on wood.


	33. Subtext

"This is the final intact memory," Dr. Amari's voice drifted into Deacon's consciousness as he teetered over the neuron bridge toward Kellogg, who stood before a desk. An old man sat behind it, the bags under his eyes sagging with the bruised look that sometimes came with a terminal illness.

"Sit down," the elderly man said, his tone of voice making it sound more like a command than an invitation.

"I prefer to stand," Kellogg leaned against the wall, pulled out a cigar, and lit it.

"I would prefer that you sat—and that you did not smoke those foul weeds in here," the man glared at him.

"What do you care? You're dying anyway." Kellogg took a deep drag on his stogie and let the smoke out slowly.

"While if not for the Institute, you would be long dead by now. It smells nauseating. Put it out."

"Put on the air filtration system, boy. I was part of the Institute long before I pulled your baby ass out of a freezer, and I'll be here long after you're gone." Kellogg responded.

The last intact memory had been about taking an infant from a cryogenic pod and murdering his parents. This was the baby, all grown up? He had to look deeper into this.

When Deacon touched the grizzled, scarred old mercenary, the man rasped, _'It was hard to believe that sixty years had gone by since the day I killed that baby's parents. Harder still to believe that baby was now the old man sitting behind that desk. Father, the Director of the Institute. It was him, though. I'd never managed to drum up the proper respect for him—maybe because I'd had to change his diapers a couple of times on the way to the Institute. The woman scientist they sent along had never cared for a baby._

 _'I was surprised they hadn't killed him with their experimentations, but they hadn't. He was 'Purity Control', an uncontaminated genetic specimen, and too valuable to waste. So he was raised in what amounted to isolation, away from other kids for the first fifteen years of his life. As a result, he developed what would have been an exaggerated view of his own importance, except that he turned out to be a genius. The only thing was, he was just as isolated now as he was back then-never married, no kids, no friends. Not that I cared, but sometimes I wondered what would have happened if I'd took more of an interest in him.'_

Father pushed two documents over his desk in Kellogg's direction. One was a copy of 'Publick Occurances', the a 'newspaper' from Diamond City, and the other was something else, a booklet with a large yellow flower on the cover. Deacon recognized it as one of Raina's seed catalogs.

The two men bantered back and forth about the documents. This, then, was what the Institute knew about Raina.

"My linguistics expert believes this was written by someone with an IQ well within the range of what is considered genius."

"And you want them because…?." Kellogg asked.

"Because I am dying. Because there is no one within this facility with the vision or the capacity to lead it once I am gone. Because the departments are fractious, and will push their own agendas without looking at the bigger picture. I read this, and as I read it, I can see glimpse the mind of the one who wrote it. _This_ is my successor. Or will be, if they can be found before they're corrupted _."_

 _'The old man might think he meant to bring this new outsider in from the Wasteland, but I didn't believe it. Not for a second. Maybe he was going senile or the cancer had spread to his brain. The Institute I knew wasn't so nice. If his 'successor' didn't cooperate damn quick, they'd be stuck in a cell until all their secrets were wrung out of them, and then they'd be disposed of in the reactor. If they were lucky, they'd be dead first.'_

Kellogg stubbed his cigar out against the wall. "All right, old man. I'll find them. Any idea of where to look?"

"In the booklet, it invites potential buyers to visit the settlement of Sanctuary where they are actively growing these plants. That would be a place to start." Father steepled his fingers, watching Kellogg.

"I'm gone." Kellogg left the room. X6-88 was waiting outside, sleek and deadly looking with those mirrored shades and his Courser's garb. _'The new breed of synths could pass as human. Some of them did. But the Coursers weren't built to blend in. They were killing machines, pure and simple. Smarter, stronger and faster than almost any real human. I'm just glad they were always on my side.'_

The synth hunter spoke. "Mr. Kellogg, I am to accompany you in your search for Doctor Brian Virgil, who has left the Institute. Our intelligence suggests he has taken refuge in the Glowing Sea."

"Talk to Father," Kellogg said, "Find out which mission has priority. Either way, I'm heading to the teleporter."

"That seems to be the end," Amari's kind voice came over the scene. "Teleportation! If only the memory had shown us a little more. It would explain everything-why we haven't been able to find the Institute. If they teleport in and out, there would be no door to find. Hang on, I'm bringing you out."

There was always a disconnect between the physical body and the 'mental' body when someone used a Memory Lounger, just as there was when they dreamed. When the Lounger lid opened and cold air poured in, Deacon was surprised to find he was dripping wet with sweat and shuddering.

"Here," Dr. Amari pressed a Nuka-Cola into his hand. "Drink this. The sugar and caffeine will help. How do you feel?"

"Like I've been through the wringer," he replied. "Kellogg was...really not a nice person. At all. In any way. But...he was a human being." He drank the soda, pausing to say, "When you see yourself in somebody like that...it makes you think about what kind of person you are. You know?"

"Yes. But what we have learned is invaluable. Do you know what you will do next?" the doctor asked.

"Report in, then...head off to the Glowing Sea. This Virgil they're looking for, he has to know more than Kellogg did. Kellogg was just a triggerman. Virgil was a scientist." Deacon then realized that someone who should have been in the room, wasn't. "Where's Nick?"

"I brought him out first. He's waiting for you upstairs." Amari gestured.

"Good. He's radiation-proof. I want to talk to him about going to the Glowing Sea."

The detective was sitting on a sofa by the exit, and at Deacon's greeting he looked up, and said, in Kellogg's voice, "So. Did you get what you wanted out of my head?"

"Nick? Are you, uh, feeling okay?"

"Uhhh-what? Why are you asking?" Nick asked, in his own voice and manner.

"You sounded like Kellogg for a second there."

"Oh. Amari said that might happen. Mnemonic resonances, she called it. Yeah, I'm fine. All diagnostics are normal. Can't say the same for you-you look shook up. What do ya say we hit the Third Rail? First round's on me."

* * *

Deacon looked better after a pick-me-up, and started a conversation with an acquaintance from the neighborhood as Nick knocked back a shot of coolant. On the edge of the synth's peripherals, he saw Hancock coming down the stairs, alone. The Mayor of Goodneighbor wore a thoughtful expression in addition to his signature tricorn hat and antique suit. When they made eye contact, Hancock made his way through the crowd and sat down on the next bar stool.

"Don't worry, Raina's in her room at the Rexford, with King on guard," was the first thing out of the Lucid's mouth. "Charlie, a shot of something neat and nasty, willya?"

"Fair enough. How did the meeting go?" Nick asked. He looked Hancock over, assessing just how bright his eyes were, the slightly careful way he took the shot of liquor, and judged him to be loosened up, and probably in a talkative mood. The Mayor had a very high tolerance for intoxicants of all kinds, and what would floor Raina would hardly make Hancock unsteady.

"Great. We're gonna get set up to grow weed here, worked out all the details, and everybody's happy. Thanks, Charlie. Hey, what if you see what our friend in the backroom will have, and put that little proposition I mentioned to him. Can't set up shop until after we've cleaned house," he explained to Nick. "There are some...undesirables in the warehouses right now, and they didn't move along when I asked nicely, so-."

"This friend in the back-that wouldn't be Maccready, would it?" Nick asked.

"Hey, don't be so hard on the kid," Daisy said, swooping down on them from the other side. "I know he was a Gunner, but he isn't that bad, really. He made a mistake when he joined them, yes. He got out as soon as he could and he's still paying for it, in a lot of ways. Give him credit for that."

"Hmph." Nick snorted. "I'd like to know why he was dumb enough to sign on anyway."

"They don't give everybody a choice about it, you know. They go to settlements and conscript whoever they please," Daisy pointed out.

"And within a few weeks, those same conscripts are just as vicious and violent as the rest of the Gunners," he rebutted.

"Because otherwise they get dead. Anyway, he had reasons," the Lucid shopkeeper told them.

Nick turned to Hancock. "You're being awful quiet. What's wrong?"

"Nothin'. Uh-Lemme ask ya somethin, though. What's the deal with you and Raina? The vibe I'm gettin' off of ya is that you're stuck together with Wonderglue." Hancock was trying to be casual, and he nearly succeeded, but there was a desperate seriousness in his eyes, Nick thought.

"The deal? I'm trying to keep her alive and well despite everything. I thought you knew that already." Nick leaned back and watched Hancock's face. He was enjoying himself a great deal. He'd known Hancock back twenty-odd years ago, when he was Johnny McDonough, a bright kid who was a little too bright for his own good. Definitely too bright for school to keep him interested, which was why Johnny had gone looking for more interesting things to do, like Jet.

Yet despite the chems and the strutting attitude, underneath John McDonough was a good kid. Not a perfect one, but if some Upper Stands kid was taunting a Field kid, or a bigger one bullying little ones, John McDonough would be the first one there to snarl, "Why don'cha pick on someone yer own size?" and back that up with fists, slingshots, whatever he could swing into action with. Plus at least once he'd split his lunch with somebody who came to school empty handed and empty bellied.

Whether you called him John McDonough or John Hancock, in the ways that mattered most, he hadn't changed a bit.

There were a lot worse people Raina could choose.

"Yeah, yeah. I got that. That was weeks ago, though. You wouldn't still be hanging around if there wasn't something more goin' on." Hancock said.

"You're going to have to spell it out for me. I don't know exactly what it is you're getting at," Nick said, innocently.

"Aw, fuck it. Do ya-do you love her?" Hancock asked. Unless it was the synth's imagination, the Mayor looked kind of pale and strained.

"Love her?" Nick took a moment. "There's a lot there to love her for. The truth is, I've never had a closer relationship with anyone. If I don't love her, then I don't know any other name to call how I feel. But-," he paused as Hancock took in a deep, shuddering breath. "Think about how I act toward her. Is there anything lover-like in it?"

"Well-no. You act like you're her dad or something."

"Got it in one try. Raina's father died before she was born, and even Gen 3s come off the assembly lines sterile, so any family I might have is gonna have to be through adoption. It wasn't like it was planned. That's just how it played out."

"Okay, yeah, I get it now. Hmm." The Mayor rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, damn if that doesn't make things even more uncomfortable."

"Why?" Nick sat up straight, suddenly suspicious. "What happened?" Beside him, Daisy was watching with amused eyes, not missing a thing.

"Uh-First off, nothing much. Honest. However, I think she's gonna have a hangover in the morning, so be ready for that. She- wanted to fool around, but since she was drunk and we'd been trying out the samples she brought-. It wouldn't have been right. Lotta bad decisions can get made when you're bombed like that. I should know. "

Nick raised a hand, waving off any more revelations. "Um. You're right, this is awkward. So what _did_ happen?"

"We made out a little, then I walked her back to the hotel an' said goodnight." Hancock downed his drink and gave Nick a clear, truthful glance. "That's all it amounted to."

Nick sighed. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since I was there when you first met. Not sure if that was exactly love at first sight, but it was definitely something. She's attractive. Somebody was bound to notice, sooner or later. I'm not crazy about all your chem use, but I've never seen you so messed up you couldn't do what had to be done. And at least _you're_ not a war-headed bigot who stomps around in a tin can all the time."

"Somebody specific you got in mind?" Hancock asked.

"Yeah. A Paladin from the Brotherhood of Steel. Aah, I shouldn't badmouth him behind his back. He has his good points." Nick finished his coolant in a couple of gulps. "Ultimately, though, it's up to Raina, not me. I dunno how this is going to work with everything else we have going, though. Ain't like you can just hop in a car and be somewhere in minutes."

"Actually, I was gonna ask you if you could use a third gun on your walkabout. I'm gettin' too comfortable here. I need to get out of town now and then, sharpen up the ol' killer instincts," Hancock's hands dove into his pockets and came up with a canister of Jet. He shook it, lifted it up to his lips-then tucked it back in the pocket where he'd found it, murmuring that he didn't want to ruin the buzz he already had going.

"One rule if you do. No stopping for chem breaks unless it's safe in a settlement somewhere. I don't mind taking the night watch, but I draw the line at standing guard while you're tripping out," Nick told him. "If Raina agrees, that is. But-why did you say 'was' like that? Change your mind?"

"No. But-," the Mayor paused.

"But what?" Nick complained. "You can't start a statement like that and not finish it."

"It's-look. It only works between two people if they're in it just as deep, ya feel me? Whether it's just havin' fun or in it for keeps. Otherwise somebody winds up getting burned. She ain't that much younger than me in years, but in terms of worldly experience, I got a head start on her by a couple centuries."

 _I wouldn't be so sure about that_ , Nick thought, remembering the legacy of experience Raina had inherited through the 'sisters' who had come before, but of course, that wasn't the sort of worldly knowledge Hancock meant. The Mayor was about thirty, if Nick recalled correctly.

"Then maybe you ought to try getting to know each other better first," Nick suggested. "It's not as if you're required to pursue a romance just because you're along. Tell you what. What if you wait to make the decision to join us until after we come back with the seeds and plants?"

"Yeah, that could work," Hancock thought about it and nodded. "Gotta get it set up and running first. Hey!" The last word was to someone across the bar, and Hancock excused himself to join the other group.

At Nick's elbow, he heard Daisy laugh softly. "Yeah, right. That kid's got it bad. And he think's he's being so cool about it, too."

"You don't need to be a detective to spot that, but it helps," Nick said.


End file.
